What’s the past, present, and future of Sparklin—2021 edition?
It’s been 8 years of the most rewarding experience of running Sparklin on 11th July 2021, and our chief tweeted a snippet of the joyride so far, and the moonshots to be attempted.
Here’s the story of Sparklin—how it started, why it started, and what the future beholds, penned by the first Sparkler himself, Himanshu Khanna, our chief ✨
Some 10–15 years ago, design was not a great value proposition to India. Significant influences were non-existent. Very few people understood design beyond graphics and visuals.
This became apparent during my first consulting gig outside India. In 2009, in Istanbul, the client’s core team found it extremely hard to believe that I was Indian. They thought I looked Turkish (even when I didn’t have my beard) and were mainly just flabbergasted by the fact that I could converse fluently in English and design impressively.
Multiple gigs later, late in 2011, in New Delhi, I met a lot of VCs and asked them if, according to them, Indians would ever design better — or even at par, with the rest of the world?
They described Indian design as chaotic at best.
“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” - Tao Te Ching
Abhijeet Makhijani, who is currently the director at Sparklin, encouraged me and motivated me to get Sparklin up and running. He took up a coach, mentor, and firefighter role when the Sparklin world was about to get burnt.
“The fool didn’t know it was impossible, so he did it.”
Here, the fool was me 😊
- I started without an IIT/IIM degree.
- I began without any understanding of business, finance, people management, or sales.
- The biggest skill, in my opinion — knowing how to train others in design.
I was lucky with the fact that life kept sending teachers to help me progress.
Like the fact that Sparklin’s first big break, Paytm, came through Rahul Saini and Harinder Takhar.
For those of you who didn’t know, Vijay Shekhar hands out the most challenging briefs possible, and rightly so. Paytm was one of the first teams we worked with — and they’ve smashed it! Look at them now! 🤩
I often wonder that perhaps we were just lucky to be around the right people at the right time — especially when ambitious entrepreneurship was taking over India, and how!
Some time later, another young and ambitious mind reached out. Folks from Sparklin were invited for a coffee at a cafe in GK1, New Delhi, by a 17yr old. He pitched his plans to rethink the hospitality industry, not just in India but the world over.
And he continued, how design had a significant role to play. Honestly, I didn’t believe these plans at first. He was persistent. He helped Sparklin finalize its first office space! Raising hands, Ritesh Agarwal had a definite purpose of building what he believed in 🙌🏼
OYO has been creating history ever since!
We at Sparklin, started our journey as a brand+UX design agency. And got to work with some of the best minds in India and outside. For example, the identity created for iZooto gets close to 150 billion views every month, worldwide.
We didn’t realize though, that an understated change has been in the process for a few years now.
Our work with Chaayos, MilkBasket, Airmeet, NowFloats, Spectra, Taxmann, iZooto, Headstart, and several government projects made us a question and understand the width and depth of design beyond just UX.
The kid called Sparklin crawled, walked, fell, hurt itself numerous times but continued to walk. That kid has grown up now — the kid’s a young adult now.
Evolution has hit us closer home, literally.
The team stopped playing district matches long ago. It’s playing in more extensive, national, and international leagues now. It’s partnering with industry leaders and ambitious minds to rethink preset benchmarks and accelerate design-led innovation.
What does that mean?
It means that Sparklin is partnering with financial institutions to rethink customer lifecycle from the ground up. Sparklin is questioning human systems such as healthcare, education, environment, travel and more — to figure what’s next — to create a world where we can experience better.
The world is progressing. And so are we, at Sparklin ✨
We want to attempt as many moonshots as it takes, to do our tiny bit, to help the world progress deliberately.
We are looking to play longer games!
Oddly accelerated by the last 16 months of the pandemic, we’re not just redefining ourselves. Sparklin wants to redefine our part in the industry, society, and human lives, globally. We are measuring everything with a positive impact, credited or otherwise. If the measure has gone beyond the status quo, our existing frameworks may not suffice.
We are rethinking these frameworks, systems, and tools of societal existence.
