Chandani writes....Furniture Designing: A Profession of Passion in the e-magazine www.youthoncareers.com

A few months a go, I met this interesting girl named Chandani who wanted to intern with the Blue Cross Society of Pune. Since I am one of the active volunteers there, we got talking and working together. During one of our conversations, she asked me what I did and after I explained to her about my slightly uncomprehendable profession, she thought she wanted to do a write-up on me and my work. According to her, not too many people were in the line of designing and painting furniture! Hence this month, I want to share the sweet little write-up Chandni wrote....



The first time I met a furniture designer was when I met Sonia Revankar. I had heard of many different kinds of designers but this was the first time I had heard of and seen a furniture designer, so I could not contain my curiosity and I asked her, “What does a furniture designer do, exactly?”

Apart from the obvious answer (Furniture designers, design furniture) she also told me what it really meant. First of all, furniture designers are different from interior designers though they both belong to the home décor industry. An interior designer changes the structure of the house. He handles the flooring, tiling, making and breaking of walls and windows, bathrooms, sanitary ware, etc.

On the other hand, a furniture designer designs and produces individual pieces of furniture depending upon the requirements of the clients. This way, the furniture is custom made to suit the needs and lifestyle of the owner. As it provides greater comfort and enables the client to create a unique look for their home/office. Furniture designing is an option many people who are decorating their homes and offices look into to provide a unique look to their space.

When asked how she got into the field of furniture designing, Sonia told me that it all started out as a hobby. She said, “I have been very creative all my life and being able to create something new is what I am addicted to.” She started off with an undergraduate degree in French from Fergusson College and a Masters in International Business from Grenoble, France. After that Sonia moved to the US where she established a retail and wholesale store of Indian art.

While she was in the US she met somebody who did something similar to furniture designing which really motivated her.” I have to keep creating something in order to function and hence I decided to put my foot in to this”, she says. She draws inspiration for her work from colors of day to day life which she sees around her. “I have always been inclined towards home décor and living in a space which makes you grow and furniture is an important part of that”, she adds.Now she runs a furniture designing firm along with her husband, Bipin.

A furniture designer requires a lot of patience as the space has to work out just right, especially in the eyes of the client. Another very important thing a furniture designer needs to have is the ability to befriend and deal with a male oriented class of labor like carpenters, painters, polish guys, etc. To be able to create the right feel for the customer, it is important to be able to connect day to day lives with colors and designs and be very observant. “Of course, experience also helps a lot. You get better with every piece you make”, she believes.

A furniture designer needs to be dedicated to creating a new and unique piece every single time. Not everybody can completely appreciate the efforts and the designs and the remuneration is also not very much. “People ask questions like why does it cost more than what I find in a mall or think that buying from a renowned place is better than getting it done from someone they don’t know. Everything you do is questioned at all times. They don’t want to pay for the efforts taken behind every piece.” Being a woman in this field is especially challenging as most of the work involves a male dominated labor class. She says, “They don’t like taking orders from women. Also, they are inconsistent and sometimes produce low quality work unless you guide them well through your designs.”

This field can provide a lot of flexibility. The amount of work you take on, the kind of work you take on and the work hours can all be easily changed to suit your needs. It is necessary to take well thought out decisions and make sure that you understand the market. In furniture designing, the painting and creativity are a part of your profession. There are many more aspects to furniture designing that need to be dealt with. Also, you will not be able to depend on it as a standalone source of income immediately as it takes a lot of time to settle down and establish yourself in this business.

“I think one should pursue what they aspire for in their lives”, Sonia says. In the end, it’s the passion for art and creation which keeps you going.

Chandani Karnik.

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Zanzibari Doors...Unique & Intricate

I've just come back this morning from a splendid trip from the Africas and couldn't help myself but write about this beautiful Stone Town on the island of Zanzibar. The island with narrow alleys, breezy rooftops, majestic Indian & Arabic doors and private courtyards and its pristine blue ocean.



The reason I write about the significance of the Stone Town is because of its stunning, magnificient wooden entrance doors! It is a feature which makes a bold statement on this island. In my article today, I am going to describe the types of doors and its significance with the many pictures I have taken.

Since Zanzibar had a huge Indian & Arab settlement from the 13th century, the carved threshhold to the interiors played a role of a status symbol. The fashion for carved doors was brought in by the Indian & the Islamic people. Back then, doors were designed and scaled for each family, thus being unique.



Some common features I noticed among these doors were that they had a centre post with a wide frame and a lintel all elaborately carved. The carvings have traditional Islamic or Indian motifs, iron or brass studs for decoration. Also, most of the doors are double and open inward from the centre.

There are many types of door...some of them are -

Lamu Doors

The door belonged to one of the Stone Town hotels...I loved the contrast of brown against the light blues of the walls.

The Lamu door is the simplest door and are found on smaller houses. The motifs of these doors are rosettes or geometric forms. They also have some Swahili colours like emerald green or gold.

Siyu Doors

This picture is taken from an exhibit from the Nairobi Museum

This door is the only one different from the others...yes..it doesn't have a centre post. Also, the doors are painted in circular motifs rather than carved. A little history about them is that they were made with very hard wood which was difficult to carve and hence the painted motifs.

Omani Doors

I think this door was freshly polished...it just dazzledin the sunlight!

These doors have the grandest outward display I've even seen in my life! They are the most popular in Zanzibar. The lintel and side post are so ornate and intricately caved with looping floral designs and motifs that its hard to take your eyes off them. They have a very profound arabic feature i.e. they have inscriptions of the Qur'an at the centre of the lintel. They are also heavily studed with brass and iron hinges and ornaments. They say that such doors are seen very often in Oman.

Gujarati Doors

This door and a house belonged to a Bhori Zanzibari

Even now, these doors are found mainly among the Indian shops with thin centre post carved beautifully. These doors are wide, coffered and studded with a central hinges so that only one part of the door needs to be opened. History shows that they were imported from India since they are made up of teak which is not indigenous to Africa.

Zanzibari Doors

A lot of shops had this door!

Though they are named Zanzibari...they come from India and mostly from the Mumbai region. These doors were introduced by Sultan Barghash in the 18th century with a tinge of western classical feature of the pillars carved into the frames. This is one of the most popular door here and imitated widely.

This article might have sounded a bit boring but believe me, if you ever saw it, you would be as bewildered as I was! Infact, these East Coast African doors are marked contrast to very plain architecture of the houses and make a bold avowal of the occupants, both as reference to their culture and social status. This is a legacy that Zanzibar preserves and should preserve since its unique, artistic, intricate & obscure!

Some more pictures....

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Here's Why This Latest Wave of New York Startups is Just the Beginning

[Also published in the Business Insider]

Once again, there is a renewed sense of enthusiasm about the New York City startup community. Today we are seeing a major influx of high-quality entrepreneurs moving here—or back here. The quality of company formation has never been higher, and there are a variety of reasons for this.

Perhaps most obvious is that New York City has always been a place where people want to live, and today is no exception. There are two additional factors now driving New York’s increasing popularity among aspiring, sophisticated entrepreneurs. First, the general trend toward capital efficiency, and second, what I call the horizontalization of information technology.

Capital efficiency means that more companies can afford to move to New York if they choose. A variety of dramatic cost-reducing realities have lowered the fixed-cost of building a software or web startup by an order of magnitude. At the top of the list are the rapidly advancing technologies of open-source software and cloud computing. As a result, some of the hardware and support-system costs (such as large staffs of IT personnel and extensive real-estate footprints) once associated with operating in New York simply do not apply in this new environment.

Dennis Crowley, founder of Foursquare

Horizontalization is more nuanced. The technology industry has been a standalone industry throughout most of its history, a vertical that stood alongside other large industries. Today, technology is becoming more of an integrated portion of the existing stacks—or the distinct components of hardware, middleware and software required to operate entire IT infrastructures—within businesses rather than a separate vertical industry. As a result, essentially all industries—including the seven industries headquartered in new York—are increasingly able to make use of the lower-cost, better-integrated information technology that open-source software, cloud computing and related innovations are enabling.

With this evolution comes a striking change in calculating the optimal location for technology businesses. It is simply no longer true that technology companies must be located near technology centers. Today, the optimum strategy often puts these companies near business centers, where the customers are. Few business centers in the world are as central as New York City. No matter where something is invented or produced, it is sold here.

Michael Bloomberg, the city's most successful digital entrepreneur

Outsiders may see this accelerating startup activity in New York as a new phenomenon, but those of us who have been active within the local startup community since its revitalization in the early 1990's have a different view. I regard this latest surge in activity as yet another wave in an impressive chain of entrepreneurship that is rooted in the long history of New York City.

New York’s place as a fountain of entrepreneurial activity—and why it appears to hold even more potential today -- cannot be properly understood without a fundamental appreciation of the region's rich tradition of entrepreneurship and commerce. A look at the past can provide important clues that help make sense of the present. Moreover, I believe that this 400-year history provides vital context for informing the conversation now taking place about the technology community in New York today, and for further building the entrepreneurial ecosystems to nourish it.

The Beginning

Before there was New York City, there was New Amsterdam, and it didn’t start with the Puritans. The Dutch West India Company deposited 100 people on the shores of what would later become New York City back in 1624. All were entrepreneurial, pragmatic, money-seeking traders who didn't much care for rules. Two years later, Peter Minuet bought Manhattan for an infamous $24 in trinkets, from Indians who did not live here. And so it began—a portentous new outpost of western civilization, literally created over a deal.

Peter Minuet buys Manhattan for $24.

The area has a long history of what I call an entrepreneurial class; these are individuals for whom an “off-the-rack” life does not suffice. The tinkerers, the inventors, the merchants who believe they alone have the instincts, skills and chutzpah to reinvent the world around them have always been drawn to this city. There was a reason those Dutch men and women got on the boat almost four hundred years ago, and it had little to do with religious persecution. These were the first New Yorkers, and they were entrepreneurs.

From the earliest days, waves of entrepreneurial activity have advanced the local economy here. These waves sometimes were manifested in completely new arenas, other times through the deployment of technologies within existing businesses. Yet the drumbeat always remains the same: Maturing industries experience a talent drain in favor of more entrepreneurial endeavors. First a trickle, then a steady downpour. Eventually, maturation leads to consolidation and scale, and the process is repeated. Some of the more important entrepreneurial waves in New York City and its immediate surroundings have included fur trading, timber, sugar refining, shipbuilding, tobacco, banking, canals, railroads, clothing, textiles, electricity, media, entertainment, advertising, communications, fashion and a long list of other industries that have come and gone with the passage of time. Today, seven industries remain headquartered in New York, and all are undergoing rapid technological transformation.

New York Banking is Born

In the latter part of the 18th century, New York banking was born with the founding of the Bank of New York. Within a dozen years many more banks followed, new services were devised, and trading—previously the passion of a few dedicated risk-takers huddled under a buttonwood tree in lower Manhattan—coalesced in the form of the New York Stock Exchange. These new institutions—and their product-creation engines—would finance entirely new industries on a national level. Men such as Hamilton, Burr, Morgan, Goldman, Drexel and many others less well-known were, if you will, the Bill Gateses and Michael Bloombergs of their day. All this activity in financial services was in part dependent on two unrelated technological transformations: communication through newspapers, and over wires.

J.P. Morgan

Newspapers Begin to Drive Information & Advertising

Although newspapers of one sort or another had been around for some time, they were generally small, highly localized and very partisan. The ability to rapidly and broadly disseminate information was still new to the world even at the turn of the 20th century. (The New York Times, itself founded in 1851, was one of the earliest papers to go national, but that didn’t happen until several decades after its first editions were printed.) It was the commercialization of the electrical telegraph, which occurred in the mid-19th century, that enabled the transformation of newspapers through a localized method for disseminating news. This new technology reduced the time it took for a letter or news story to travel across the country from weeks to minutes, making it possible to provide more complete information. Today, of the three national papers sold in the United States, two are published from New York. (New York currently boasts about 270 newspapers printed in 40 languages.)

Henry Luce, founder of Time.

With the rise of the newspaper—and later—the magazine, advertising soared as a new business model developed by entrepreneurs and merchants to promote their wares to a larger customer base. Erickson, McCann, Thompson, Rubicam, Barton, etc., all founded their eponymous firms between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and all in New York. Many grew rapidly through acquisition, rolling up smaller, entrepreneurial firms whose ranks had surged from roughly a dozen in mid-century to several hundred by the 1920s. Nearly one hundred years later, seven of the eight largest advertising firms in the world reside in New York.

NYC: The Land of Entertainment

Entertainment was dominated by New York from its earliest days. Vaudeville—and later, Broadway—was an industry populated by highly competitive entrepreneurs. Since news and advertisements sold tickets, and ticket sales meant profit, the unique combination of the media, advertising and banking industries stoked the rapid growth of this form of entertainment. It helped of course to have a rapidly-growing middle class with the time and money to take in these productions. You probably can guess from where much of this early audience hailed. In time, new technologies like radio, and later film and television, would transform forever the nature of entertainment. Much of the production and eventually the creative arms of the entertainment industry as we know it today moved to Los Angeles, primarily for weather-related reasons. Still, even now, all four major TV broadcasters, many of the largest cable channels, and three of the four biggest record labels are based in New York. One-third of all Indie movies are still made here, and an incalculable number of TV shows.

Content Needs to be Distributed: The Birth of Communications

Since content in one form or another was the product of all these New York-centered industries, it was logical that the media for distributing it and the input technology for enabling it (electricity) needed to be located nearby. And it was. Entrepreneurial businesses such as The New York & Mississippi Valley Telegraph Company (now known as Western Union) were created here. The Edison General Electric Company (which ultimately became General Electric) was established by Thomas Edison a few miles southwest of lower Manhattan, in Menlo Park, N.J. In fact, the first commercial power station ever built was on Pearl Street in lower Manhattan.

Thomas Edison

Dozens of related startup businesses also were founded in and around New York City, although for reasons of cost, space and safety, many followed Edison’s lead and conducted most of their research in nearby New Jersey. Much of the telecommunications infrastructure we rely on today at a global level has grown from innovations created and still in development just south and west of New York City. While rising labor costs and other factors have long since curtailed local manufacturing significantly, research and development, and the management of existing corporate infrastructure, are still based here.

NYC in 2010: Commerce Comes Full Circle

As I stated earlier, New York is home to at least seven global industries: finance, media, publishing, advertising, communications, retail, and fashion. More than 10 percent of the Fortune 500 are headquartered in or near New York City; a greater percentage than any other location in the United States, including all of California. The City is also the most international city in the U.S. (and not just because the U.N. is located here) as measured by immigration, diversity, trade, representation, tourism, languages, population, religious views, quantity of international flights, unpaid parking tickets by country, and so on. Nearly one-third of New York Metro residents are immigrants, even today. It also is one of the leading cultural capitals of the world, with a cornucopia of diverse artistic, intellectual, ethnic and religious offerings. Millions of people consider New York City one of the world’s great places to live. This is despite the inherent challenges associated with nearly 20 million people living within a relatively small geographic area, or the equivalent of one of every 16 people in the United States.

Ben Lerer, founder of Thrillist

It is against this backdrop that New York’s entrepreneurial class is again rising. The earliest signs of this resurgence appeared in the 1980s, when entrepreneurs like Michael Bloomberg grasped the transformational nature of computer technology on financial services. Throughout the 1990s, many non-financial entrepreneurs left their posts at the region’s major media conglomerates in search of new opportunities utilizing the latest technologies. Compact disks were the first of these new technologies, then came the rise of the Internet. Early winners such as N2K, DoubleClick, 24/7 Media, About.com, TheStreet.com and ScreamingMedia emerged, creating a groundswell of new activity.

At the same time, already-strained technology budgets were pushed into overdrive in the face of widespread concerns over Y2K disruptions. Enterprises spent even more heavily, upgrading their IT systems before the clock rolled over to the year 2000, on top of large budget commitments already underway to embrace the new age of the Internet. New York experienced this so-called “dot-com boom” in step with the rest of the developed world, but with a decided bias towards media and entertainment. The bursting of the dot-com bubble dealt a temporary setback to New York’s entrepreneurial community, yet the transformational nature of new technology was not stalled for long. Today New York is embarking on the second half of what undoubtedly will be seen as a massive resurgence of entrepreneurial activity, extending perhaps for another twenty years. None of this implies that there won't be periods of indigestion as various bubbles inflate—and burst—within different technologies and industry sectors, but the fundamentals are in place.

So why is New York so well-positioned this time around? The key factors are: 1) the industries anchored here; 2) the tectonic shifts occurring within those industries, based largely on technological advances; 3) personnel dislocations; and 4) the propensity of the companies within those industries to spend aggressively on technology. For example, global IT spending within financial services is around $550 billion, annually. Communication spending on IT is about $400 billion. Retail’s share is around $150 billion. And so on. In total, companies within these and other industries are projected to make spending decisions on close to $1 trillion in technology—every year—for the next decade or two. Of course, the majority of deployments generated by these purchases will not occur within the New York area; most happen across the decentralized global organizations of major corporations, and the varied locations of smaller businesses. Yet many of the decisions will be made here. And many of the decision-makers will be impacted by the entrepreneurial class, whether in developing and procuring new products and services, or by being recruited into start-ups.

The New York-centric news media will continue to closely monitor and report on the media-related start-up culture within the region. This coverage will dominate relative to what is reported on the start-up activity in other major industries. This is natural, given the impact of media innovation and commercialization on the news media’s own rapidly evolving industry. But make no mistake: The revolutionary benefits—and consequences—of accelerating entrepreneurial activity will have a major impact across all NY-based industries, both foundationally (e.g. broadband deployment, elastic computing, spectrum optimization), and at the higher layers (real-time webs, complex data visualization, semantic analyses, mobility, location-aware services, exchange platforms, big data modeling, and a cornucopia of other technologies).

When all the pieces are put together, the reasons behind today’s surge in pathbreaking New York start-ups are easy to grasp. New York remains one of the world’s greatest and most livable cultural centers. It has a diverse core of seven global industries competing aggressively, increasingly through technology. A new set of lower-cost economics is enabling technology providers to operate closer than ever to business centers such as New York. And New York is attracting a widening pool of talent for start-ups that is highly motivated. This latest wave in the long, storied history of entrepreneurship in New York is only getting started.

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Populist blather is approaching a high-water mark

Populism is fueling a vitriolic debate around Carried Interest tax 'reform', as demonstrated by the comments over at Chris Dixon's blog. It can feel good to go off on extreme examples like Steve Schwartzman eating $400 crabs, but it's important to think through what will really happen if this legislation actually becomes law.

Tax policy as it relates to finance and investment activities in the U.S. has as its primary goal the provision of incentives / disincentives based on 'preferential' activities. It is about incentivising behavior, not some individualized and debatable construct of fairness. Preferential activities are defined as long-term investments that promote real GDP as opposed to short-term trading with zero-sum outcomes. As a nation we have decided the correct metric is 365.

So, the question is, do we want to revise the incentives, and if so, how? Changing the policy on 'carried interest' will, in fact -- and with all due respect to my friend Fred Wilson's hypothesis -- impact the flow of commitments into venture capital, private equity, leveraged buyouts, oil & gas, real estate, and just about every other partnership-based investment alternative out there. This will happen at least two ways...

First, these asset classes will be less profitable. Why? Because some of these newly-imposed 'costs' will be shared by the limited partners, reducing total returns for them -- and their respective asset classes. It is naive to believe that only GP's will be affected. This will spark an exercise in reallocation analysis, and a flight to 'perceived' quality for those dollars that remain committed.

Here's what you will end up with... Fewer, larger 'marquis' firms with more pricing power, synthetic 'structures' that echo current LP economics but somewhat divorce term enforcement (more on this below), and tougher deals for entrepreneurs (the mid-range firms with only moderate power will be most at risk, yet it is precisely this group that creates the competitive dynamic that startup companies have enjoyed in recent years).

Second, fund mangers will certainly come up with creative structures (never forget the laws of unintended consequences, Idealism's frequently-fatal flaw) that traverse legal roadblocks while dissaligning shared incentives within the core investment activity. In other words, 'carried interest' will go away, replaced by some form of partner-based ownership (most likely same as common stock) on a deal-by-deal basis. Now, take a moment to think about that... and then think about future financing events, board representation, even deal selection - and the inherent conflicts of interest therein. Turning a performance compensation mechanism into an owned option difficult to claw back will certainly not be in the interests of either startup companies or LP's (or the pensioners, endowments etc., that comprise them).

In sum, reducing the normalized return differential between common alternative asset classes and ordinary market investing - and thus altering the perceived risk-profile - will have real dollar consequences, make no mistake. Think you dislike hedgies now? Wait until a quarter of alternative assets pour into their coffers.

Moreover, it will significantly alter deal structures creating further chasms between funders and founders. And by the way, at least in the last ten years (as it relates to VC anyway) had this Bill been in effect, your US Gov tax bounty would have rounded to, um, essentially zero.

Couple of other points on this Carried Interest tax question....

1) As for Carried Interest being a 'fee', it's a performance override (and in no way definable as 'revenue'). Any payment -- performance-based or otherwise -- is ultimately 'describable' as a fee. The question isn't the nomenclature, it's in the certainty and timeliness of the payment, and the underlying asset that generated it. If it's under 365, then it's short-term. If it's directly attributable to the increase in value of a long-term asset, that's materially different than a tip for a job well-done.

2) Every successful VC I know could earn a multiple of their current salaries in other (and not necessarily so different) businesses; they choose to trade off substantially lower current economics (about 5:1 by my calculation) for even higher future earnings potential. But that's just what it is.... potential. Implicit in this contract is a larger piece of the pie and a cap gains tax-rate on value-creation in exchange for the assumption of this risk. Take away the tax benefit and VC's will be more risk-averse, not less. It is also ridiculous to suggest that the best people will stay in venture capital 'because they love it' despite substantially-diminished economics. Seriously?

3) As has been pointed out by others like Jeff Bussgang, quite a few of us in this business are ourselves entrepreneurs, having built successful, long-term venture capital businesses. We risked our capital, security and futures to chart our own course. But VC firms do not have exit opportunities like the startups in which they invest. We know that going in, so it's okay as long as alternative paths to wealth creation remain. You can count on two hands the number of firms that have sold or gone public since the dawn of this industry some fifty years ago -- and on one hand the number that have actually been successful at it. That's maybe half a percent; a tiny fraction of the transaction rate startup companies enjoy.

In the end, I prefer a system that rewards long-term value creation over the casino that is Wall Street. And my viewpoint may surprise you, in that I, too, believe that there is a difference between investing a dollar from my own pocket versus a dollar managed that came out of yours. Which is why I think the long-term gains rate should be revised down, to 10% for a principal's money, 20% for OPM override earned beyond a 12-month period (up from 15% today), and then the rest at short-term rates. This in my view achieves the all-important goal of delivering proper incentives for long-term investment over short while being a 'fairer' system. Bear in mind that despite all of the derision around OPM, most all businesses - including most startups - use it to build value. In the end, all of us are 'stewards' for someone else's money, one way or another. The economy doesn't care from whose actual pocket it's long term dollars come. Nor do entrepreneurs.

VC-as-bogeyman is a popular meme at the moment, and I can't say it isn't somewhat justified. That said, babies and bathwater come to mind, and, unfortunately, heart-felt but unexamined populism rarely leads to better policy. It's not supposed to; rather, it's highest and best use is to stir debate. The current carried interest Bill will do little more than hurt the startup ecosystem while raising a de minimis amount of tax revenue.

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Unaccounted Artwork.....

In my last post, I talked about the Eatmoshphere project I did in April 2010. Its been doing great and my work has been appreciated. But sometimes it is also the small peices of art or just a little splash of colour helps make a difference. Its not always that I like to paint big things and hence, this time, I have showcased all the little sub projects I've done so far...unaccounted and solely out of interest...

I'll start with 4 name plates I have done for a few friends! They were fun projects and done while my work load was low...



The one below is my very own....done in a hurry and not so good but it still brings colour and life to my entrance.



My friends tell me that these name plates have made so much difference to their entryways and not only that, they have recieved a lot of compliments on them.



My friend Sayali a very romantic person and wanted her and her husbands name painted instead of their last name...and hence painted something cosy and romantic for them...



Aside the name plates, I also did my husbands office, one of my big projects. The space came out great but it needed some colour bursters. I decided to make them instead of hunting for something. Hence I came up with a theme..flowers, fruits, animals, in amulgamation with humans. Not all paintings are original here but there is certainly a touch of my imagination....



I wanted colour in this corner of the office and hence decided to use the vibrant reds and blues...the corner does look gorgeous..



I did this for my husband's cabin. He is very passionate about his drums...the Djembe, an African drum and in his cabin, I wanted to show all the elements of nature come together and hence the fruit, the human and his passion, his drum!



These paintings are in the entryway - bright, bold and welcoming!



A painting of a fruit is very important since my husband owns a coldstorage and one of the very important thing that is stored there is fruits and hence the artwork...

My next set of artwork was done in Eatmosphere..an abstract canvas which has a mèlange of the colours used in the cafe.



These mirrors below are 4 different mirrors all put together to give one big feature in the cafe. It also gives a perception of space and adds to the vibrancy or the liveliness of the space.



So this is some of my unaccounted but well appreciated work of art..I am sure I'll work on much more because they are my stress busters and they make me happy and keep me going...

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EATMOSPHERE it is.....

The Hanging Sign Board outside the Café

I am so sorry for not being around in the month of March. I totally missed being on the blog but time just flew and I didn't get my hands on till today. Anyway this month, I have a whole new exciting feature and that is "Eatmosphere". Now that might sound a bit odd but let me explain. The reason I have been away from my blog for so many days is because I was working on this beautiful cosy café owned by my dear friends Rhuta & Manish.


This is how Eatmosphere look from outside


Manish & Rhuta behind their healthy and tasty Menu Counter designed by Kanchan

This wonderful couple has a quaint story about how they landed up starting this little eatery of soup, salad, sandwiches, crêpes, & chillers. Manish a guy so passionate about food started off as a chef at Taj, Mumbai and then switched to a whole new world of IT. Rhuta has always been in IT and worked for IBM while in India. The duo shifted to Dubai and made a stressful living working for 12 hours a day in the field they thought was right for them. As time passed, they realised that life was much more than slogging. The feeling of owning, sharing and meeting different people would make them happier than earning a good salary without any personal life. And hence, they decided that they have had enough and want to achieve their little dream of owning a place where they can serve a wholesome meal with love and keeping health in mind. And this is how Eatmosphere budded after a lot of hardwork from all of us.


Glimpse of the café

Now you might want to know why I am talking about all this? Well my friend Kanchan and I, did play a fair part in this project...yes I did the interiors while Kanchan who owns Southpaw Creatives designed their logo, menu, did the marketing & communication collaterals and above all suggested the name Eatmosphere! She too is a wonderful artist who also did up my logo and came up with the wonderful name Lively-wood for wich I recieve a lot of compliments! The rest of my blog is going to be the pictures of the place, the signboards and the little nook and corners of Eatmosphere.


The mezzanine seating with warm comfortable seatee designed by me


Another cute African Corner...I love the amalgamation of colour here!

In the above two pictures, I have tried to provide different types of seating...each comfortable, cosy, gives a choice of seating high or low and breaks the monotony of the place. My idea was that, everytime someone comes to grab a bite, they should want to try a new seating which is unlike the one they've tried before.

One more beautiful and interesting feature about this part of the café is its flooring which makes the whole place different, I mean very different!
Infact when I started doing the interiors, I was very pleased to see that the mezzanine did not have tiles. I decided against tiling this corner and did what my friend Sheetal has done at his ashram called the The Urban Ashram. So here is a picture of the flooring to see what is different.....


The leafed floor


The washroom area

Though small, we wanted this area to be pleasant and comfortable for people to freshen up. In the whole process, I did not want to forget about the colours and theme at the same time make the place seem bigger than it is. Hence the combination of blue and turquoise with a mirror facing the café worked in our favour.


The Lover's Corner as I call it...

This is another nook outside the café that I really like. It is secluded, colourful and awfully cosy! I call the orange and red stools, Oranges 'n' Cherries and the little table Kesariya which contrast and gel with the 'Geru' or Teracotta flooring!


Some more outdoor seating..


Hand-painted turquoise-blue table which has a great combination of metal, wood, tile in-lays and glass

There is another concept we have tried to promote...the idea of recycle! Manish and Rhuta lost a lot of cups & glasses in their shipment from Dubai to Pune, I was thrilled to see them and decided to make use of the lovely colourful crockery. We also got hold of some bottles which was basically going to be trashed and restored them and check what and how we've used them!


The Recycle Corner

So this is the café and this is the work we all did to make it so bright, colourful, welcoming, cosy and of course, can't forget the food. Hope you have liked it and I would love to have comments and suggestions on it! Till then, if you wanna grab a bite, Eatmosphere is open from 10a.m. to 10p.m. in Wanorie, Pune in the lane of Kedari Petrol Pump.

For more details on branding, logo designing, advertising and more, please contact Kanchan @ +91 (0)9011012454 or just send an email to kanchan.gokhale@gmail.com

For more details on Eatmosphere, please call Manish +91(0)9967514019 or just send an email to rajpalmanish@gmail.com

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Vision, or blindness?

David Fisher once wrote...

“What often characterizes visionaries is their lack of vision. It's a popular idea that people of genius see farther and clearer than other people, but perhaps the truth is actually the opposite. Visionaries often don’t notice the enormous and obvious impediments to realizing their technological dreams – roadblocks apparent to more practical people”.

I think he makes an excellent point, as relevant today as at any time in history. Maybe more so.

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