Homegrown retail decor specialist Surreal Design Studio goes global

Surreal Design Studio are specialists in retail décor comprising malls, airports and other public spaces—temporary as well as permanent installations at these locations. From when the company was founded, back in 2012-2013, the industry was a fragment of what it is today. The company’s founders Ameya Kankonkar and Rahul Soni talk to TOI about the industry and the company’s global ambitions keeping in mind the festive season. Excerpts:

Please share a little about your Indian projects and clientele.
We work with names ranging from the Phoenix group to DLF, Orion, Inorbit, the Lulu group, Bombay airport and all the seven airports of the Adani group, including Bombay now. Projects are taking shape across the country. As far as our work functioning style is concerned, we consider ourselves different from artists, architects or event agencies who work in this space.

Design is a key aspect of our functioning and we heavily rely on our in-house design function. The aim is to execute out of the box ideas, sometimes even larger than life. The designs are very pronounced as well as innovative and unique. We don’t rely on reference work as much. At certain occasions, the production is outsourced during season time due to bandwidth issues but majorly it is in-house.

Can you throw some light on the installations in the public space? What is the project with the BMC?
We are focused on installations in the public space and are also doing public art installations in Bombay. We are very closely invested with the BMC where we are creating a beneficial model for the corporate sector as well as the government. In fact, we are we are actually working end to end with the BMC and identifying key spots in and around Bombay.

There are 24 circles with BMC - we identify key spots in and around Bombay, which they are happy to give out, identify interested sponsors in the public art space or tech space - we design and execute for them.

Your business expansion plans?
From a macro point of view, we are right now in India, but we are also heavily focused on going global. Despite the pandemic, we have been able to partner with about four to five agencies – across Australia, US, Europe – the MOU is signed and work has already begun.

From an aspirations’ point of view, we want to be a global powerhouse as far as design and décor is concerned. Through our interactions with our partners globally, we sit very beautifully at the cusp of great design coupled with a cost solution that few competitors around the world are able to offer. China is no longer cheap.

We intend to enormously focus on our exports going forward. We have already signed MOUs with three agencies based in Australia, two companies based in the US, one based in Europe, and we are in active conversations with multiple clients.

Recently we also did one project in Australia, one in the Middle East and before covid we did one project in Africa. These are some of our achievements over the years.

Your view on the global markets when it comes to installations and décor?
Eastern Europe is not great on design, neither is China. They are pretty much great at replication, but what people find great with us is that we understand and we have a very diverse design palette when competing with agencies from say, Europe, who have been doing décor for the last hundred years. Our global competitors, while the work they do is splendid, have a very straight jacketed approach. We are in fact blessed to have so many different palettes in India, it gives us an opportunity to work with vibrant colors, an array of textures and varied materials. We work with at least 10-15 different kinds of materials, which the clients really enjoy. We give them a solution which is inclusive of design plus fabrication, production and execution, which many agencies do not globally offer. Lot of people rely on design, and you execute, and a lot of countries, like China, Eastern Europe for example, rely on production. They like to have the design created while they take care of production.