At the end of a dance performance last week in the city, a rasika (fan) walked up to the person manning the ‘Eppo Event’ stall, and told him this: “I wouldn’t have come here if not for you.”
Bhaskar Srinivasan beams as he narrates this tale. It is exactly the kind of response that he imagined receiving when he, and his friend Viswanathan Subramanian, started a mobile application for iOS and Android phones. Their venture — Eppo Event — provides a calendar for Margazhi’s concerts.
They chose Margazhi season because both are Carnatic music rasikas. “There are many apps in the market,” Bhaskar says, adding, “But a lot of them are updated only during the season. We want Eppo Event to be a 365-day worldwide platform, where multiple things can happen.”
One of the unique things about the application, according to Viswanathan, is its daily scheduler feature. “When we started R&D on the app, the first thing we thought about was the primary challenge to any rasika — not knowing which sabha to go to because there were just too many performances.” For this reason, the application came out with a ‘scheduler’ feature — a list that is made according to the user’s artiste preferences and location. This helps the user to have a smooth day at the sabhas .
With close to 3,500 downloads, they are looking to scale up before coming back in full strength for next December.
After a close association with ‘Kovai-yil Thiruvaiyaaru’, and other events in neighbouring States like Kerala and Karnataka, the two US-based founders are also eyeing the US market. “We will continue focussing on the Carnatic front, and hope to bridge the gap between the rasika and the artiste. We want our users to keep coming back,” adds Bhaskar.
