We invited Dev Vig, Cofounder of De Space for an interview with Most Popular Stories to know more about his entrepreneurial journey.
De Space was founded in 2010 by Akshata Menon Vig, an architect and Dev Vig, an MBA from Symbiosis. The couple has been married to each other for the last 13 years.
- Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey as an entrepreneur
The journey began when we bought our own home in 2009 and Akshata worked on its interiors. People who visited our house talked highly about it and inquired if we would take up their home interiors too. It was then that we decided to start own interior designing firm.
While Akshata takes care of the designing and execution part, I handle the sales, marketing, and operations bit.
- Why did you choose entrepreneurship over a job?
Before De Space, I had been a part of the corporate world for 13 years, and Akshata for a period of 6 years. While we both enjoyed our corporate careers, it was the zeal of doing something of our own that made us begin our entrepreneurial journey.
I am specialized in sales, marketing, and operations, while Akshata’s core competence was designing. Together, we were confident that this was a perfect combination for running a business smoothly and profitably.  Â
- What was the vision behind it?
De Space vision is to be known as an initiative that focuses heavily on client satisfaction, space planning, and high-quality execution.
- Describe the services that you offer to your customers and in what way they are unique?
De Space offers a turnkey interior designing solution to resident owners. There is a lot of focus on space planning, something that is a challenge for the majority of homeowners. Every project is treated as unique, and there are no standard designs on offer at all. The designs are prepared after a thorough understanding of the space available, as well as understanding the client’s requirements at length.
Apart from this, there is a strong focus on client experience. We have invested a lot in building a strong team at the backend, comprising of skilled labor, project managers, which has helped us in delivering quality service to our clients.
- What difficulties which you have faced or you are facing?
An organization cannot become big only by the efforts of its founding team, it requires an extremely strong team of people who believe in the vision of the founders and walk on the same path as theirs. Like any other company, we also faced the challenge of having the right set of people supporting us.
Hence, in our early years of inception, we decided not to grow exponentially; rather, we focused on creating a team that would understand our vision. It took a bit of time but helped us to stay afloat in the long run.
- How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
Like any other initiative, this domain comes with its own set of pressures/stress. On one hand, the client requirements need to be taken care of, and on the other hand, one needs to handle a set of blue-collared labor and ensure that the execution is done smoothly. It’s a high-pressure role, and as founders, we need to look at both the aspects and strike a balance.
The only way to handle pressure or stress is to face it and constantly work on improving yourself and your organization.
To ensure there are no surprises, we have personally invested a lot of time in building processes, educating the team about client expectations, experience, and satisfaction. As a result, the team today understands the vision and work towards it. This takes a lot of stress away from us.
We also personally stay in touch with the clients and ensure their minute requirements are taken care of. Being in touch with them and ensuring that we are just a call away gives a lot of confidence to the clients too.
All these measures have helped us to work towards smooth executions, and have helped us in building a strong trust factor amongst our clients. And when you work on trust, the pressure takes a back seat.
- What is one strategy that you believe has helped you grow as a person/startup?
In today’s startup world, there is a lot of emphasis on exponential growth. When we started our journey, we were also advised to achieve numbers. But we strongly felt the opposite. We always believed one is known for the quality of work she/he has done, not the quantity of work. Hence, we focused on creating a team that would help us to scale while not diluting our principles of the high-quality offering.
While it might have made our journey slower, it helped us to ensure we build a strong foundation, and it’s that foundation today, that has helped us to reach where we are today.
- How your company is helping India to grow?
De Space is an attempt to organize a highly disorganized residential interiors market. It has been a sincere attempt of the founders to offer a professional set up to their clients, something that has been missing in the ecosystem in India.
De Space is also an initiative to help skilled labor, and offer them stable livelihoods, rather than doing work on a daily wage mode.
- In your opinion what are the keys to success?
For us, keys to success would be following:
- Unique offering
- Focus on client satisfaction/experience
- An excellent execution team that understands your vision
- Never compromise on values/principles
- Constantly monitor your performance, and take necessary action immediately
- Never be complacent
We are not mentioning hard work here, as we feel that’s the basic requirement for any job.
- What advice would you give to someone starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?
While hard work, consumer satisfaction are a given when you are about to start a venture, it’s equally important to deep dive and understands the market thoroughly. We have noticed a lot of people start their ventures with a gut feeling that their concept will work well, and will be accepted wholeheartedly, while the market ends up behaving completely different.
It’s very important to stay in touch with your customers, understand what they feel, as it gives you the right inputs on where you can improve. This will help you make logical decisions as an entrepreneur, and will also help to ensure you’re in the game for the long-run.
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