Designs on your office

OUR BIG IDEA

Nupur Gupta and Anupama Dalmia, friends from school, went their separate ways after graduation until they found themselves living in the same city in 2000.

Both restless, they started to design interior spaces and furniture from their living rooms. Their first customers were friends, but word spread and in January they opened their own retail space, "Alchemy", in Greater Kailash II M block market in New Delhi, and are now looking at an annual turnover of Rs 4 crore.

STARTING FROM SCRATCH
Anupama: Nupur and I met in class one at Modern High School in Calcutta. After we left school though, our paths diverged. I got married and followed my husband abroad, where I did a part-time course at the Parsons Institute of Design, which was the starting point of my interest in design.

In 1991, I moved back to India, but my husband and I travelled around a lot, and lived for a while in Bangalore, till we moved to Delhi in 2000.

Nupur: I did a small course in Calcutta about design, and then I moved to Delhi and worked for a while for Raseel Gujral (at Casa Paradox). I was getting restless and wanting to do something on my own when I got back in touch with Anupama.

We started small, and didn't need any initial investment, since we were just providing a service. We made a little room at home into our office "" and actually, this served us quite well, because it created a very hospitable environment that was very attractive to our clients. Soon, however, we grew too big and needed somewhere to showcase our work.

CORPORATE CHALLENGES
Anupama: We opened this store in January 2005, after doing two office projects, which partially helped us to fund this move (of course, this wasn't enough, but luckily we had access to some private capital as well, and didn't have to take any loans).

Last year, most of the work we were doing was for offices, for instance, we redesigned the office of Dalmia Cement in Connaught Place, which is over 20,000 sq ft.

When we started, I was a little nervous, especially given my limited experience, but I quickly learned that doing actual projects is much more educational than taking any course.

Nupur: Some nervousness in the beginning is natural. But for us, that initial stage is over and today we're quite comfortable about what we're doing.

We're delegating the actual running of the business, for instance, we've hired someone to take over the entire financial part of things. That's given us a lot more time to design. I would say that we spend about 90 per cent of our time now just designing.

PERSONALISED SERVICE
Anupama: The fact that we work so well together has also been a great boost. I have three children, and I've got certain constraints on my time that Nupur is very good about understanding. I feel like we're very lucky, and we haven't really run into many serious problems since we started.

This is a relatively new area in India, and so we don't have many rivals. We could look at marketing more extensively, because that's one area where I feel we're a little weak, but otherwise things have worked out for us.

Nupur: The key has really been that we enjoy the work. And we started off knowing that it would never be our bread and butter. The Indian design scene is very exciting at the moment; something new happens every day.

Indians are not only becoming house proud, but also taking care of corporate spaces, which is where half our work lies.

We will probably look at expanding from this one showroom soon, but right now, we're content to take it as it comes.