About Us

Who we are

Upbeat Labs makes innovative products for the Musician and the Maker. Now, at first glance, that might seem like an odd combination, but at heart, both are creative endeavors. In one, you are creating music, and in the other, you are creating objects. And the creative link between them is our Founder Sridhar Rajagopal. 

An engineer and computer scientist by profession, Sridhar has over 25 years experience in engineering complex software systems. He is also a lifelong music enthusiast, having dabbled in many different aspects of music all his life – Carnatic violin and vocals (till his voice broke as a teenager! 😊), western guitar, piano, drums, music theory (both western and Carnatic) and more recently, the Mridangam. 

The motivation for Upbeat Labs started way back in 2011 when Sridhar started Mridangam lessons. Not liking bulky electronic tala boxes, he looked for metronome apps in the then relatively new Mobile App Store to help with his playing, and found that there were none that catered to Carnatic Music. This ultimately led to him creating Talanome, the first Carnatic Metronome App. 

2011 was also the time when he visited Maker Faire Bay Area for the first time, and was introduced to the wonderful world of Arduino, Raspberry Pi, the Maker Movement, TechShop, and more, and he was hooked! He started creating electronics prototypes, leveraging his software and engineering skills, resulting in Dr. Wattson. He created ProtoStax when he was frustrated with existing enclosures and platforms that didn’t fully address his own prototyping needs.

In his endeavors, he has been helped by his partner-in-crime, Archana, especially with her keen design sensibilities and her written word, as well as being (sometimes unwillingly) the guinea pig, the first beta customer, MakerFaire booth partner, etc!

The interesting question is whether we’ll bridge the seemingly big gap between the Music and Maker markets, and come up with hardware products and tools for music – you just have to wait and see! 😊

We at Upbeat Labs believe in high quality and exceptional customer service and make every effort to put our customers’ wishes and requests above all else. With a motivated team always looking for innovative new ways to get the best products directly to you, we strive to be the creative minds that bring a smile to your face whether you’re making music or creating prototypes! We are thrilled at the prospect of serving customers from every corner of the globe! 

The Upbeat Labs team