10 FOR TUESDAYS - DEEPAK SHUKLA

Welcome back to our '10 For Tuesday's' series. This week have a very special guest, StudioBookers company founder Deepak Shukla. Deepak graduated from the University of Warwick in 2008. After leaving as a consultant for Deloitte and also as a graduate employee for Mediaedge. Deepak then decided to follow his love for music and spent two years running his own recording studios beginning from his home in West London. From this he developed a second studio in a commercial unit. From the experience he gained running two studios, he decided to set up StudioBookers to help studios and musicians alike in a very difficult economical climate.


First of all tell me a little bit about who you are and one interesting fact people may not know about you?

My name’s Deepak Shukla - I’m the founder of StudioBookers! I have a background running a recording studio of my own, so have spent my time with alot of musicians looking to lay down vocals on premade production and perfecting their sound.
And an interesting fact...I’m going to be running a marathon in Seville in Spain in a few weeks!

What is your role within StudioBookers and how did you first become involved?

I am the founder, and I first had this idea for a studio-booking service back in 2009. I had just come out of university not long before that and it was an idea I was flirting with fairly heavily for a while.
However that tapered off until I matured I guess, in 2011, and so did the idea! The company was registered in March 2011, but things didn’t really get going until around July 2011.
These days, February 2012, I spend my time focussing on driving the business forward, and help develop the wonderful team I have around me.

What is the main aim of StudioBookers and how do you think it can help musicians?

StudioBookers is going to help musicians in several key ways. Musicians will finally be able to compare studios side by side in a way that simply hasn’t been done before! A like for like comparison that will allow musicians to make an informed decision when booking a studio.
Being a musician myself (that’s another story :P) I used to share the same frustrations that many musicians share when searching for a studio. That’s why I decided to set out an try and solve that problem.

What Benefits does StudioBookers provide for the Studios that sign up?

It gives them an incredibly effective advertising platform from which to showcase their services to a significant number of musicians all on one site. And studios can do this side by side against other studios - which levels the playing field - a huge draw for many of the smaller studios.
For all of the studio’s we will also provide a calendar and booking system which will allow them to manage their bookings with us.
As a company we also in the midst of a marketing campaign, and we’re doing a range of things to make sure that as many musicians as possible are aware of our service, so studios should be interest fairly quickly through our service.

Who is the biggest joker in the StudioBookers office?

Ha ha. A good question. Well Pei (the Operations Director) certainly enjoys making light of my apparently awful sense of style. That has yet to change my tastes however!

Check back for part two of this weeks '10 For Tuesday's' with Deepak Shukla later on today.