Everything in Place

BRAND CONNECT

Published: May 6, 2019 08:17:25 AM IST

Updated: May 6, 2019 06:57:55 PM IST

Seema Seth & Annand Khatpe
Spaces Alive Interior Designers
Years of experience: 20 years

Seema Seth co-owns Spaces Alive Interior Designers, a Pune-based interior designing firm, with Annand Khatpe. The vision of their firm is to not just to design spaces, but to bring life to them. "As interior designers, we understand that an environment can greatly influence your mood and a good comfortable surrounding can enhance the quality of your life," she says. "We are passionate about creating spaces that are beautiful yet functional meeting your day to day requirements."

Charting The path
Seth, who hails from the Kashipur, Uttarakhand, graduated from Lady Irwin College in New Delhi. She then pursued her career as a teacher and taught in the prestigious All Saints’ College in Nainital & Welham Boys School in Dehradun, before getting married to a naval pilot and settling in Goa. She has also lived in Mumbai for a couple of years before making a final move to Pune in the year 2004. After venturing into different fields such as banking and hospitality, while decorating her home and bringing spaces to come alive in her new house in Pune, she understood her passion lies in creating delightful surroundings for herself as well as for others. This motivated her to take up interior design education in 2005. Since then, she has designed and catered to many satisfied customers and hasn’t looked back since 2007.

Khatpe is a graduate in hotel management from Ooty. After cruising around the world, he wanted to settle down in his hometown Pune and found his forte in making designs come alive for his clients. He took up interior designing to understand the basics of this growing field and since then has worked on various standout projects. Together, the duo complements each others' thought process, design and execution. They go in great depth to understand the clients’ lifestyles and preferences, whether it is child centric, age of the individual and functionality, while working on the design.

Challenges and Risks
"While my contemporaries were already talking about winding up their lives, I decided to delve in to the field of interiors at the age of 40," says Seth. "I realised after working in the banking and BPO industries my creative urge was not being met. I could not let myself go and had to do something about it. I did not want to get tied down to an office job and wanted to do things at my own pace. So, I started making teak wood furniture for which I got a very good response."

"Handling everything on my own was challenging," she adds. "The market was not yet fully ready to give turnkey interior projects to a woman. Handling labour issues, dealing with the clients and several minute other details, the process to be here today has been a roller coaster yet fun ride. But with the expertise of my partner we’re able to finally make it run like a well-oiled machine."

Stepping into a profession that demands high creativity, a fast growing industry at a middle age, was difficult. "In a price-conscious Indian market, we provide ample opportunities to our design conscious clientele who are looking for some revolutionary ideas related to their spaces," she says.

Life Lessons
• Our never say die attitude. We’d work for 7 days a week, 18 hours a day if needed.
• I consider myself a self motivated, positive individual.
• Passionate about making surroundings beautiful & bringing good things into this world
• A strong believer of- “Make sure your work defines who you are”
• Designing with a big imaginary sign on the head that says “Everything in place and a place for everything”

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