In this age of social media, where you have all sorts of platforms for all sorts of purposes — like Twitter for whining or Snapchat for absolutely nothing, a local startup has decided to address a different niche. Jambro is an online marketplace for musicians; a social networking app through which people can discover and jam with local artists.

All you have to do is sign up, add your music interests, mention the instruments you can play, upload a cover video — a short clip demonstrating your skills and just like that, a whole community of musicians, managers, and audience opens up for you. And like any other social network, you can also write a bio and add inspirations. You can discover musicians by location or instruments and press the jambro button to collaborate or press ‘like’ - a cumulative ranking that raises one’s credentials.

The app is similar to dating platforms except that it allows users to filter their search instead of swiping the screen. LinkedIn for musicians, maybe? Based out of Karachi, the startup is already global with presence across 400 cities with a network of 20,000 artists through app and other social media.

Jambro is the brainchild of Grocode — a Karachi-based tech company working on a range of design and engineering solutions — and was co-founded in late 2016 by a team of techies, musicians and marketing guys: Rishadullah Shaikh, Jasir Abro, Zair Abbas, Shahzaib Zulfiqar and Rehan Beyg. To this day, Grocode serves as their back office.

“I had moved to a different locality so it wasn’t feasible anymore to jam with my neighbourhood friends anymore. That’s how we got the idea to make a location-based music networking platform,” CEO Rishadullah Shaikh recalls.

Despite the obvious lack of music networking portals, there aren’t too many players in this scene. The biggest direct competitors are Vampr — a Tinder-like swipe app where you can discover local musicians — and Jammcard, a North American invite-only platform for music professionals. But Shaikh is confident about his product and market.

“These are rather exclusive portals which is probably not the ideal approach to music, where you need traction in every way possible. Jambro, on the other hand, is an open platform that lets you build your profile, share it with people and gain more visibility,” the CEO says, adding that his startup is focused on South Asia, Middle East and North Africa — regions largely ignored by the other two competitors.

In 2017, the startup got enrolled at Muru-D accelerator — backed by Australian telco Telstra — in Singapore for a six-month programme. That helped them set foot in the international arena as well raise SAFE notes worth $200,000 from foreign investors. Now, jam bros are eyeing a million dollar seed round to refine their tech before initiating their marketing campaign.

But raising money is not that easy, especially in this industry. Even the other two US-based startups haven’t yet reached their $2 million-mark and they have been in the business for longer than Jambro.

As of now, the startup doesn’t have a defined business model either but it actually makes sense for a social networking platform still trying to build a user base.

“It’s too early for that but we have narrowed down two streams we can eventually monetise on: in-app advertising for music gears, merchandise, concerts, events, etc and premium features like verified profiles for paying users,” Shaikh says. For the former, they need to gather enough data to refine their algorithms and a loyal base willing to pay a bit extra for the latter.

That’s in the future though, so how do they make ends meet until then? Well, there are ancillary models to keep them afloat in the meanwhile. Jambro organises a lot of events or jamming sessions — as the name suggests — and through its ticketing, merchandise and sponsorships, which have so far generated around $50,000.

That doesn’t sound like the most sophisticated way of making money for a tech startup though, especially since they are looking to scale. Maybe, but it does make sense if you consider the industry they work in. Jambro is not just another social media app; it’s a platform dedicated to musicians, so the total addressable market is already smaller than the usual platforms like LinkedIn or Tinder, etc. More importantly, it thrives on collaboration and that’s exactly what Shaikh wants to do.

“We are still trying to build a close-knit community of musicians and tech alone won’t cut that. That’s why we have all these jamming sessions so artists can connect and collaborate,” Shaikh says. In 2019, Jambro has 75 events lined up across Pakistan — with presence in all local music fests — along with a few in Singapore and the US.

The market is obviously there and quite underserved too but only time will tell if our jam bros can cash in on it.

The writer is member of staff:

m.mutaherkhan@gmail.com

Twitter: @MutaherKhan

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2019