The residential interiors market in India is highly unorganized with young home buyers struggling to find the right partner for their end to end interior needs. There is also a general lack of trust between clients and vendors with cases of spurious raw material and horror stories of vendors abandoning projects mid-way being common. Nandita noticed this when she started getting questions and help requests from harrowed home makers on her blog on Home Interiors. “People, mostly young couples, had bought their first home and were asking me stuff like Where to buy material from? What material to use? How to identify fakes? etc. They really had no clue.” she says. Her blog hosted on Blogger today has over 3500 questions and answers that real home makers have asked. Under some of the popular posts there are more questions that what even Google’s Blogger can handle. “For me, till today, it is more about guiding customers to do the right thing while they build their dream home than

just running The Studio as a business” she adds. For this reason, The Studio focuses 100 percent on residential interiors. “We don’t take on Commercial interior projects as that does not align with our purpose,” says Nandita

Making Lifestyle Homes
According to Nandita there are 5 essentials that go into designing a residence – Furniture, Painting, Lighting, Furnishing & Décor. All five have to be woven together to give that right feel to a home. “You may have done all your furniture in the most expensive teak but if you don’t have the right lighting and furnishing to go with it then the home may well look ordinary” says Nandita. “In addition, the biggest constraint, also the beauty, is in shaping this weave around the lifestyle and needs of the residing family –from hobbies, guest traffic at home, kid & elder friendliness, grocery buying frequency all the way to how many shirts one has in his wardrobe,” she adds. It is this very focus and extreme customization that differentiates ‘The Studio' in the Lifestyle Home Interiors segment

Humble Beginnings
Nandita’s first paid interior design project came about in 2010. “I did my own home in 2007, friends and relatives liked it and kept asking me to start it off as a business. I informally worked on a couple of homes of friends & family over the next 3 years and in 2010 started a blog on home interiors. I felt

information should free and accessible to people, hence the blog. That’s when enquiries started pouring in” says Nandita. It took another 4 years, streamlining the supply chains & creating dedicated teams of workmen and in 2014 “The Studio” was formally born.

Today, The Studio is amongst the leading lifestyle interior design firms in Bangalore. “We are not in the volume game as to me Interior design is a form of art – if you do too much you will lose out on both the quality and the fun,” says Nandita. Design as an art form is reflected in multiple facets of The Studio’s operations – things like not taking on more than three turnkey interior projects at a time, Nandita's personal involvement in each and every project & zero compromise on material quality

What Next
“We want to be the guiding light in the Interiors business - not only a trusted partner helping customers make the right choices when making their homes but also educating them on the huge influence that good design has on the life of the residing familys” says Nandita. To take that vision forward The Studio is investing in a first of a kind Experience Center, a space where customers will be able to feel what good design is all about. As Steve Jobs put it ‘Design is not just how it looks but really about how it works’. So, watch this space.