BOOSTING ENTERTAINMENT BUSINESS ONLINE

ZIPSCENE CO-FOUNDERS JAYDEV KARANDE AND SAMEER MUNGUR HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY: CINCINNATI HAS A LOT TO OFFER

BY KARA GEBHART UHL & PHOTOGRAPH BY DARNELL WILBURN

LIVING ZIPSCENE

Jaydev Karande and Sameer Mungur are consumed with one thing: Zipscene. As co-founders, friends and roommates, they get up in the morning and talk about it. All day they work on it. Dinner conversations always turn to it. At night, they go out and promote it. And every day they wear T-shirts with the Zipscene logo, advertising it.

Launched in 2005 as an invitation-only online community, Zipscene connects local men and women seeking events at local entertainment businesses by letting them create personalized calendars to find out what’s happening at their favorite venues. Once you are linked to Zipscene, a plastic membership card arrives in the mail that connects you to more than 30 local venues that offer incentives including no line waits, no cover, and discounted drinks and appetizers. Members may also gain free admission to exclusive Zipscene parties at popular venues around town.

While the site provides a great way to optimize marketing for local vendors, Karande and Mungur fell most passionate about connecting people in Cincinnati and creating a sense of community. Free for both on-line visitors and businesses, locals may join only if invited by a participating business or another Zipscene member. This way, the site grows organically, meaning members help the site grow from within versus and anonymous company doing it for them.

“I’ve always felt strongly that there’s a lot to do in Cincinnati,” says Mungur. “There’s not enough awareness.” Tired of publications giving Cincinnati a poor score when ranking, for example, the best cities for singles, Karande and Mungur decided to do something to put Cincinnati back on the entertainment map. “We’re passionate about creating a community,” Karande says.

WORD-OF-MOUTH EXPERIENCE

Karande and Mungur’s backgrounds helped them do just that. Mungur moved to Cincinnati seven years ago to accept a job with Procter & Gamble after graduating with an engineering degree from University of Pennsylvania. He worked at P&G for five years and then quit, wanting to do something on his own. During this time, Karande studied marketing at University of Cincinnati and was spending a lot of time working as a consultant.

Thanks to similar social circles, the two met and became close friends. Together they conceptualized, marketed and promoted five major local events, and quickly realized the power of social networking and word-of-mouth marketing in Cincinnati.

FUTURE OF ZIPSCENE

While currently not tracking hits on their website, Karande and Mungur estimate thousands of members and more than 100 participating businesses. The two friends run the site out of their East Walnut Hills apartment. While they order the membership cards from an outside company, they spend hours printing, folding and mailing letters with cards tucked inside to new members.

As far as growth is concerned, Mungur says right now they're focusing on Cincinnati. “Just getting it up and running is tremendous amount of work,” he says. But they do make time to visit the entertainment venues they promote almost every night. “We work hard but we play equally hard,” Mungur adds. All they want in return is sense of community and awareness that Cincinnati has a lot to offer.