Startup Singchana: Calling all Karaoke Fans!

Love karaoke, but too shy to sing for a crowd? Online karaoke website Singchana is set to change that for good. Now tune up your karaoke skills without having to embarrass yourself in front of strangers, practice all your favorite tracks, have your singing rated to improve yourself, or simply log on for some karaoke fun!Yourstory.in caught up with the Mehta brothers – Hitesh and Vikram to find out about their unique venture.

Tell us a little about Singchana.

Singchana is an online karaoke singing portal that allows users to sing all their favourite songs and more. One can practice their singing, record their tracks, have themselves rated and challenge friends to beat their score. Users’ songs are stored in their personal account, and there is a unique quantitative scoring method that allows one to know how well they did in any singing performance.

Singchana provides a unique opportunity for people of all skill levels to participate in a community with others who share their interest in music and singing. Thus even if someone is not a great singer, it is a great social community for karaoke lovers, music fans, online gamers, etc., that is different than the other networking sites.Singchana is a very interesting name for a startup. How did the idea come about?

If you break up the word Singchana, the two corresponding words are commonly known to those acquainted with Hindi. ‘Peanut’ translated to ‘sing’ and ‘Chickpea’ translated to ‘chana’, combined together is a popular Indian snack that is freshly roasted and served.

It is a cheap, protein-packed snack that's widely available throughout South Asia from street-side stalls or roving vendors. As we like to say, it's a funny name; it's a punny name; and it's a value-for-money name. An online karaoke portal named after a snack—it's undeniably unexpected, and we think it's kind of funny. The pun is on the different meanings of "sing" in Hindi versus English. And while ‘singchana’, the Hindi version is an inexpensive way to nourish yourself, Singchana, our version, is an inexpensive way to enjoy yourself— all you need is a computer, a microphone, an internet connection, and a love for music/singing.

There are several international online karaoke websites but few in India. Why hasn’t the concept taken off here yet?Online karaoke gaming is a new concept world over and not just in India. What makes its progress slower in India is the fact that it requires high bandwidth for its real time interactivity and the available bandwidth here somewhat hinders its growth than the pace that it has the potential for. Although, we have seen some surprising responses and are positive that things will move faster than most people expect right now.

Another thing is that the concept of karaoke itself is recent to India. We see a lot of non-resident Indians getting attracted to the site because of the availability to connect with the music of their roots.

Some patience and marketing will hold us in good stead.

What is your revenue model?

Mainly advertisements and subscription. A portal like Singchana is a very useful platform for content providers to use for marketing. It’s a great place for companies with services/products allied to music to reach out to their audience. On the other hand, we have also attracted some great talent – artists who want to gain practice, exposure and a fan following and thus are loyal premium users of Singchana now.

These ancillary benefits help us provide an entertaining and unique karaoke experience whenever and wherever the user wants. Our strife is to offer a complete online package that appeals to a broad range of users. As of now, we’re also looking to move to the next level and are looking for and in talks for strategic funding.

What are three things that make you sure about Singchana’s success?

Its unique offering that is social, music, gaming technology; a passionate team’s focus in building intellectual property and our unique approach toward content partners.

Also, we’re constantly looking to enhance user experience. For example, as of now we’re offering multiple language karaoke options – English, Hindi and recently added smaller but growing collections in Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, French, Spanish and German; there are also definite plans to add more Indian regional as well as other international language songs.

For more details about this interesting online startup, do check out their website. Also, do share your thoughts on this story by writing to us at [email protected]

- Pooja Ganeriwala