Simran Mulchandani, Co-founder and CEO, Bluefrog

Imagine John McLaughlin playing jazz fusion by the side of your dinner table. Crazy! you might say but then at the Blue Frog club in Mumbai, live performances by world renowned artists are the order of the day- six days a week. Nestled in a defunct mill in Mumbai, Blue Frog was started by five partners in December 2007.

“Bluefrog is our collective passion to promote a live music culture in India by providing a platform to bands and artists across the world,” says Simran Mulchandani, CEO and one of the founding partners of the company, which has four business verticals. Apart from the club, the company has four state-of-the-art music recording studios, a music production house comprising top-notch composers, musicians and producers and an independent record label and artist management services.

“Quite often, an artist, who performs at our club, ends up recording an album or jingles for ad films at our studios,” says Mulchandani.

Blue Frog Records has already released a few albums - ‘Light Tribe’ and ‘New Day-The Love Album’ by Shaa’ir + Func, Smoke Signals by Smoke (Ashu and Dhruv), ‘Floating Point’ by John McLaughlin, ‘Moving Images’ by Vivek Rajagopalan and ‘Full Circle’ by Sanjay Divecha.

“There are so many phenomenal artists languishing in relative obscurity due to lack of a proper platform to showcase their talent. We at Blue Frog promote these talents by organising live gigs, organising tours across India, managing artist’s interviews, merchandise, workshops, lectures…in short, we build brands out of bands,” adds Mulchandani.

The Club, which is barely a year old, has already become an important destination in Mumbai for international artists performing different genres of music from jazz, blues, funk, soul and afro/latin to electronic, club, rock, folk and lots more.

So who are the forces behind the extraordinary leap of Blue Frog?

“I had been an investment banker for 15 years and worked in New York and Singapore before a chance meeting with old friend Ashutosh in Goa renewed our old passion for music and we decided to concretise our dream to start a wholly integrated music company to promote live music in India,” reminisces Mulchandani.

“Ashutosh also had a production house in partnership with Dhruv Ghanekar, making ad film jingles and feature film scores. Another two partners, Mahesh Mathai and Srila Chatterjee, were making ad films and features for Indian and foreign clients,” says Mulchandani.

Mulchandani quit his job in March 2007 and used his corporate experience to draft the business plan, getting necessary approvals from the government, working out lease agreements and handling contractors, hiring staff, and setting up Blue Frog from scratch in December 2007. “The interiors of the club are modeled on Italy’s most famous opera house, La Scala in Milan, while the old world rustic charm of the defunct mill is retained,” says Mulchandani.

“The initial months were tough. Once a performer walked off the stage due to an unruly crowd. However, slowly, music aficionados got to know about the place through word of mouth and got hooked to the live performances, blended with an inventive cuisine and an exotic bar. Now people inquire about artists’ performance schedules in our club and book seats in advance.”

Blue Frog has artist schedules planned three months in advance. There is a pre-screening team, which goes through the artist records and recommends them to senior management for final approval. Once approved, the travel, logistics, hotel stay, performance etc. is taken care of by the company.

Now, the success of club in Mumbai has buoyed up the management to establish Blue Frog clubs in other cities too. “This will also give our artists a ready platform to perform in other cities,” says Mulchandani. However, he declined to confirm or name prospective cities for expansion.