Interior designing is a field that is boosting powerfully. A field with innovation, art, and designing, which feeds the soul of an artist. Like any other business, designers are also succeeding in their respective jobs. It was not the case in the past years but now it is.

Designing is not just drawing but it is fulfilling one’s dream by giving the desired outcome. While searching for such different designing firms, we came across D-Zone Designers, an interior designing firm magnifying the interiors of any customers’ buildings into soothing, pleasant, stylish, and positively warm environment for the people using the space.

D-Zone Designers tries to understand the morals of well-established true lasting relationships with its customers and embrace the opportunities it has in creating their dream homes. D-Zone Designers is in Pune near Deccan. It is providing all interior design related services from past six years. The team of CIO Look India had the opportunity to interview Mr. Dinesh Kirve, the Owner of D Zone. Following are the highlights of the interview:

Please brief our audience about your company, its values, vision, and mission.

• Mastery: Our experience, services and our products enrich values, provide economical solutions, and create new opportunities for the customer. We are clear with communication and guide our clients through entire process of conceptualization, design, and realization to desirable solutions with innovation.
• Quality: We work in more organized manner with well-defined process and procedures along with latest technology. We continuously monitor all our work, evaluate, and improve ourselves holistically.
• Commitment: We respect and understand our customers requirement and we believe in providing solutions to all their issues in responsive and effective manner. We own responsibility for what we do and for a constructive dialogue that develops long-lasting relationships with our customers, suppliers, and employees.
• Vison: Our vision is to be respectable, sustainable, desirable, and durable interior design firm providing innovative and aesthetic designs. We will consistently deliver design services, which will bring complete satisfaction to our customers and their requirements.
• Mission: Our Mission is to influence the lives of all the customers and leave a long-lasting impression on their minds, hearts, and imagination. Our long-term goal is to provide customer service by taking one step further then other designers and stay aligned to our core values and embrace it.

Brief us about the featured person and their journey in the architecture space.

I am Dinesh Kirve, owner of D-Zone Designers. I am an interior designer graduated from MMSID (Marathwada Mitramandal’s School of Interior Design) in the year 2012. My journey began with an internship, which I did for six months and then I worked in two firms as an interior design associate. I gained good knowledge, experience, got to learn the know-hows of interior design firm, the ways of working, handling dealers, vendors, etc.

After a gap of two-three months I started my own firm named D-Zone Designers and started working on consultancy projects and turnkey projects. I learnt a lot as turnkey projects developer and understood the thin line between designing and execution of the projects.

I came across several setbacks, hurdles, and issues. Also, there were situations where the project was about to turn out with some unexpected results and the real challenge was to make sure that I take it positively and deliver what is promised and visualized.

What sets you apart from the rest of your competitors?

We all know that when there is time to hire a designer for your house, you have hundreds and thousands of designers claiming themselves to be best in market. This is really an immense feeling and as a customer you always want to give your house in safe hands, which are thrived to deliver you a home that is beautiful, alluring, and inviting, which will make you comfortable, relax and keep the outside world away from your space.

I believe in myself, and I always take new projects as a story with different perspective of delivering creativity, innovation, and maintenance of free designs. Design and services provided are usually inclined towards classy, modern, or contemporary designs based on customer requirements.

We strongly believe that ‘Simplicity never dies’ and it can be seen in most of the projects that inhibits natural finishing with immortal colors, which will make any project a strong contender in race of time.

Being an artist, my major strength is having an artistic view for any project I work on, which allows me to play with different colors with comfortable ambience, use of overhead, and free lights in appropriate percentage. It allows me to draw attention to utilities placed on walls, interior decorations to make the space more appealing and establish simplistic views

What or who motivates/inspires you to be in the architecture space?

Interior Design in the architecture space has huge influence on people’s feeling and their behavior. What we choose in design has a direct proportional relationship with what we deliver in terms of space, comfort, and decorum, etc.

For instance, consider a home with moderate passage entrance and passage area, a design with correct articulation of lights, colors and usage of design can provide an illusion to person of having huge passage and this feeling and execution excites me. This is an actual inspiration for me to be in this field.

I am from art field and a watercolor artist, so this is again the major reason for me to be in this profession. I get an opportunity to play with different colors, orientation, approach, designs, and face challenges and overcome them. This also provides me chance to enhance my communication skills.

Coming up with unique, pleasant, and aesthetic design is another reason I aspire to be in filed and grow to success that one would always dream of.

What were the challenges you came across when you started a business in the architecture space?

Of the many challenges I faced, I can describe the very first challenge I came across for the very first project of my firm. The design delivered was up to the mark and as expected. However, me being a beginner in my field could not understand the entire budget the customer would have to pay.

The budget quoted to client and actual cost had huge gap, but I could not go back to customer and ask to pay for difference in amount as that would falsify my values of due-diligence approach in work. The difference in cost was settled from my pocket. My first project didn’t give me any income in terms of money, but I have learnt important lessons of how to work in this field.

Post this project, I somehow lost my confidence in taking turnkey projects, I started providing designs and consultancy services to customers. I had more clear vision on how to work with this turnkey project, slowly I gained my confidence again and started working in turnkey project and they were delivered successfully with my desired percentage in terms of income.

Apart from this, we do come across many issues related to space fitting and illusions, plumbing, electrification, material quality, and dealing with dependency of workers. We come across people, vendors, suppliers, customers of different mindset, mentality, and understanding and we need to understand them, clarify our points, and get the plan executed as designed by aligning all these people with one understanding. And believe me it is a difficult task.

How the adaptation of new technology in architecture has helped transforming your company’s operations and what more could be expected in the future?

We use AutoCAD as basic software to create detailed work, 3D-Max, Archi-CAD, and Google Sketch UP to create 3D designs. In last seven years we have seen huge transformation in this software and how they evolved in terms of creating the designs with great user experience, easy to use, and manage.

These software have helped us to create a design that are more realistic, have it rendered so that it can be shared with customer to make them have the look and feel of the space with designers’ perspective.

Instead of the evolution these software have come across, they still have long way to go, an upgrade is really required in minimizing the time in creating the design. Bringing in more flexible drag and drop facility in software, improving the graphics, making it more user friendly, aiming more on user experience, and last but not the least having the rendering time improved phenomenally.

How has the ongoing pandemic affected the operations of your company? How are you driving your firm to sustain its operations and ensuring safety of your employees at the same time?

The pandemic has really affected our personal and professional work in terms of mental peace, calmness, focus, daily-routines, and certain limitations in getting new ideas due to restrictions.

Well, sustaining this time is difficult but certainly possible with positive attitude, few changes in habits, and getting normalized with new routines. Pandemic brought in the strict lock-down, which restricted us from going on-site and completing the work. Projects were delayed due to unavailability of workers, materials, and several different things.

Following the norms provided by government, social distancing, wearing masks compulsorily, making-sure all your assistants are following the same, helps me and my co-workers remain safe.

What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the architecture space?

It is always a blessing to have a mentor who have already achieved their goals and is very much successful in their career. Getting a Guru will always help you in finding the correct path and guidance at every stage of growth in your business.

It may happen that we are not able to find our mentor but still you can learn it yourself by following few of the below tips which I personally did embrace.

Take risks, challenge yourself, keep a business mindset, envision, find and keep good people around, fight with your fears, be action oriented, be disciplined, be punctual, build an amazing team, and last but not the least keep the positive vibes maintained throughout.

Where do you envision yourself and your company to be in the long run and what are your future goals?

We envision to be a prominent, outstanding, and topmost interior design firm. We are eager to deliver unique and sustainable designs and service excellence to a wide range of customers in Pune and other cities.

We really aspire to add values to living spaces of customer with elegant, lavish, appealing, and pleasing designs.

We are continuously working hard to provide budget friendly and quality solutions to meet the expectation of every house owner, who dreams of having well designed house where he can spend his quality time with utmost prestige and pride.

I, as a designer and owner of this firm have always provided timely and required solution to every customer approaching me and build a trusting relationship. It’s our goal to follow all the visions and mission statement we have defined for our firm.

What is the current scenario of the architecture space in India?

As per one of the reports it is known that the market for home interiors and renovation in India is estimated to be between USD 20 Billion to USD 30 Billion. This number will increase in coming years, which gives us wonderful opportunity to grow our business.

As the real estate market grows, the interior design market is likely to grow in proportionate with it. Rise in income level and upgrade in living standard of people is equally responsible to bring that positive surge in the market growth.

People now a days are choosing theme-based designs for their residential spaces. Social Media usage have also increased the influence on people to go with interior design solutions. Virtual reality has made visualizing and experimenting process easy for both client and designers.