You know Bal Krishn Birla – The ZopNow guy? If you’ve met him, he’s an embodiment of cheer and good spirits. The common refrain amongst entrepreneurs is that one must dedicate their entire focus, energy and life to the venture, but Birla’s not been one to conform. ZopNow’s been growing, and so has BhooleBisreGeet (BBG)- his other passion that he’s been equally involved with and focused on.
So we decided to ask him about that one!
1. What was the initial idea behind starting BBG? How has it shaped over the last few years?
It started as a personal pursuit to reconnect with music. I just wanted to spend 15 mins listening to music forgetting everything else in life. And then I started sharing it and friends liked it. Which finally ended up in a page and using which I was able to build communities of music lovers in various cities. Offline events helped this even more.
2. Building a community is very tough, but tougher part is keeping the community together. How have you guys managed it?
Community grows with interaction and bonding. Everybody has a memory associated with a song and providing a platform for that helped in building initial traction. Our non-commercial events enabled a large number of people to lose stage fear and that brought them more confidence and alignment with the community.
3. How do you find time for BBG meetups, given that you are running your startup, ZopNow as well?
I have volunteers in every city who are die hard music fans who help organize such things.
- Dr Prakash Katakia ( Mumbai )
- Darshan Singh ( US )
- Falguni Upadhyay ( Mumbai )
- Mangla Bhogle ( Mumbai )
- Meenu Suri ( Delhi )
- Mukesh Chandra Jha ( Bangalore )
- Neena Razdan ( US )
- Ranjana Mishra ( Pune )
- Shalini Jha Mishra ( Bangalore )
- Shailaja Dubey ( Mumbai )
- Shiva Priya ( Bangalore )
- Varuna Kandpal ( Bangalore )
- Rachna Varma ( Delhi )
4. How has taking a hobby to the next level helped you in life, in general ?
BBG has enabled us to produce happiness at a mass level and spread it around. Gives a deep sense of satisfaction and makes life worthwhile especially because of non-commercial nature and our ability to align it with social causes.
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We like what we hear – and we’re not just talking about the songs! Any passion – whether its a venture or a hobby – benefits from following through with action beyond the idea, vision and desire. And it helps if it has the kind of impact BBG has had, and involves the kind of networking and spreading-of-cheer that Birla does with both pleasure and ease.
Birla has also used the fun factor to create a very cool set of attributes around both his personal brand, as well ZopNow, which undoubtedly benefits from the informal, cool yet sincere image and hyperlocal presence of the people behind it. His timeline is full of food (often with the team), bikes, and music. presence
It’s meant to be fun, after all!
