21 Learnings from running a Design business in India

We completed 6 years of Sparklin in July 2019 — a highly rewarding roller-coaster!

Sparklin
Sparklin
Jan 27 · 7 min read
Shot from one of Sparklin’s first design meet-up (beerUX)

I’m the guy who dared to go against his better judgement, Himanshu Khanna, fronting Sparklin since 2013.

I laughed, I cried, I learnt and most importantly I grew IMHO, as a designer, an entrepreneur and a lot more humble human being.

Here’s a quick-read on my learnings of swimming against the tide of status quo — attempting a design business in India.

1. Sparklin evolved out of multiple micro-discussions with friends and strangers, spanning over 2–3 years.

As a design consultant, before Sparklin, I loved the travel, excitement, and money that came along. It took me a year’s sabbatical to unlearn the consulting mode and finally jump to entrepreneurship.

Istanbul 2008 — my biggest design consulting engagement before Sparklin

2. I was an arrogant youngster who didn’t care.
I thought I had nothing to lose!

We had a flying start with a star client (one of India’s most valued startup till date) much before we could officially launch Sparklin.

Fun fact: negotiated Sparklin.com in my first year of college — at 17 years of age, from the original quote of $7,000 to $70.

3. We were on a high! We had some of the most interesting startups in our kitty on day 0. The team was enthusiastic and charged up. And honestly, I had no idea how to handle people.

I expected everyone to behave, think and work like me — endlessly. We failed, big time!

Sparklin’s first office shots

4. We were not even officially afloat, and we failed!

A client lost funding, the other one practically fired us, and I broke up with my longtime GF. To top it all, almost everyone in the team quit.

By everyone, I mean, I was the only member in Sparklin, at the time. My natural response was to shut shop. I must have contemplated for months. For an unknown reason I could never understand, I didn’t give up!

5. A lot of people came together to support including Arpit (Blume Ventures), Nikhil (Medianama) & more.

A lot of unknown people approached too. They had seen Sparklin’s work, somewhere. Work done in the last few months was garnering attention. And yet it was not enough. I continued unsure, made mistakes further.

A panoramic view of Sparklin’s first office get-together
Early shots of process at Sparklin
Shots of Medianama’s one of the biggest events — Nama — branded by Sparklin
Vivek, co-founder of iZooto, during one of the brainstorming sessions at Sparklin

6. In hindsight, all mistakes are great learnings. And quite expensive ones.

I was hiring folks randomly. I hired a barista from Cafe Coffee Day (first pan-Indian coffee chain) once. He was polite in serving coffee.

Requested a friend to join because he was passionate about dance.
Looks odd, right? It really was.

7. My logic was — if someone’s polite at one thing, the behaviour would continue, rubbing off everything in their life. If someone’s passionate, passion will be true for everything they do.

Not really.

Almost every alternate action backfired, badly. Burnt a lot of bridges. Learning continued. So did the work.

April Fool’s post from 2016 — were we dreaming or what?!

8. 2013–14 was a major struggle. I don’t think many know about it because it’s never really visible on the face.

Gurpreet (Gojek) must have been drained out in handling me then. I was a wreck & no one knew. The work, however, continued. Abhijeet, my co-founder, asked me something critical.

Team outing in early Sparklin years
Random sketch of men at Sparklin (the initial years)

9. Abhijeet asked 2 questions — why does the world need Sparklin? And what made me jump to start Sparklin, even when I waited for years?

Amongst other things, it reminded me of the book I had read before starting Sparklin — Delivering Happiness.

Downs are universal. But one must not stop to dare.

10. The questions helped! And so did a chanced interview of an industry veteran for a role.

The places he was interviewed at earlier, knew of Sparklin.
Somehow our reputation preceded the reality.

Our cashflows were haywire. We could not afford him. He was keen. He offered a cut in the salary. He’s been Sparklin since!

Is the ₹2000 note better by design — published in the prestigious Brand Equity

Once someone asked what entrepreneurship is.

11. You’re on a spaceship, shooting away from earth and somewhere at 60k kms, you destroy it. Entrepreneurship begins here. You’re dropping back to earth and need to build a landing gear, with elements available to you at the moment. It just so happens that you’re not the only one dropping.

12. As soon as you hit the ground with a makeshift landing gear, you are back at a different height of a different earth, dropping again. Entrepreneurship continues.

The problems & failures didn’t disappear. Guess my attitude changed. I accepted the reason for starting Sparklin.

5mins of fame — was honoured to share the stage with the late M.P. Ranjan — celebrated design thinker of India

13. The biggest learning of this journey has been the understanding of the human mind and behaviour. That’s also the essence of design.

One cannot cage personalities in generics. Predicting behaviour is tough because you cannot control the influences. This is where the design begins.

14. With millions of apps throwing influence, you cannot predict your own behaviour. How do we?

We, at Sparklin, are in the business of hypo-prediction. We are predicting a hypothesis & making it work. We are influencing the influences in a zest for the hypothesis to come true.

We started Sparklin Design Tips as a process of sharing our learnings — it’s been close to 100 weeks of sharing a design tip per week! 🥳

15. Another great learning is the absence of ageless designs.

It’s a mere side-effect! You work on fulfilling the context of a solution with design. Ageless is not relevant to the solution.

As a side note, challenge the status quo every now and then.
Innovation resides there.

16. Innovation is 90–98% familiarity. The rest is challenging status quo. Any less familiarity, the innovation is way ahead of its time.

Another interesting aspect in the world of invisible & understated design is analogies & references. Without them, a design makes no sense to the buyer.

Design talks — different years— different stages
Design talk with the senior folks at ICICI Bank — 2019

17. A lot of suggestions we made in the past, seemed relevant to our clients only when Apple & Google worked on something similar.

There was another major struggle — to not get bought by trends, acceptance & awards. Sparklin continuously tries to NOT get stuck to the norm & rethinks its own choices.

18. Design is not a great value proposition in India yet. Design is not understood by many worldwide, including the ‘designers’. It takes a lot to pitch a design & rare to find full acceptance from the client’s side.

Best reference points for acceptable designs are what exists & has been recommended by someone senior, even if it makes no sense.

Sparklin’s annual trips — from Kalga in Himachal Pradesh, India to Singapore

19. As a company working in the design of the future, in India, one fights cashflows, client acceptance, training & grooming teammates, survival in general, stone mindsets, dwindling economics, quest to evolve and innovate.

Design seems personal to everyone, and yet, not that important.

20. Sparklin made it a point to weigh everything with impact, credited or otherwise. We could not follow any existing frameworks if we wanted unique results with our design approach.

You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit. ~Harry Truman.

21. Be honest to self. Know when you failed & what you learn. Keep the head high. Never fail to give another try.

Make new wishes, attempt new goals. Enjoy the change you want the world to see, before you make it their reality.

Just be smart, not the smartest, and you can learn a lot.


We’d love to know your story of learnings and the journey to who you are today. And if we can help you in any way with our experience (mistakes attempted), please feel free to ping us on Twitter at WeAreSparklin.

Here’s one of our earlier videos from Diwali 2015.

Hugo & Arthur wishing you on behalf of Sparklin (2015)

Sparklin

Written by

Sparklin

A human-focused digital agency specialising in research, strategy, UX/UI design, dev of web & mobile apps, branding, gamification, graphics. Hello @sparklin.com

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