Associate Director – The Canvas (Interview PART-1)
Anita Yadagiri is a pioneering force in the world of design shares her thoughts on beautiful world of design, which are profound. She was born and brought up in tier 2 city, Hubli and completed her studies from KLE College, and she did her MBA from NIRM. She began teaching for the first three years of her career. She relocated to Bangalore in 2005 and began working for DSP. Anita also has attended a professional course from IIMB, where she has gained her management skills.
She was with DSP for about four and a half years. She elaborated on a distinguished career that evolved from her formative years in education to exposure to various projects in which her exceptional skills and learnings contributed to success. That is where she first learned about corporate interiors.
She began to understand the business and discovered that it was not as fast-paced as it is now. There was no WhatsApp or other type of communication tool that we have today is a major difference. After spending four and a half years in DSP, she moved to Praxis Inc, a Bangalore-based design studio, where she has been for 5 years. She worked as a Design Associate and handled commercial projects while practicing.
She handled not only commercial interiors, but also show rooms, hotels, Show flats and a lot of exposure to different types of projects.
She started understanding the business perspective in her previous organizations, and not beyond just an architect or designer, but from team building to client handling.
She began working for Zyeta Interiors in 2014 and stayed for about six years. She has contributed her skills to the development of Zyeta. They grew small team to a 100-team company in six years, which was a significant increase. Then, in August of 2019, she joined The Canvas, where she has been working for about 3 years and counting.
Any architect or designer who has been successful in one field, whether it is a furniture designer or an architect, has one story or design language that they follow throughout.
Great design is more than just good aesthetics. It is the way we put things together.
Simplicity is not the absence of clutter, that’s a consequence of simplicity.
After working for so long, she was convinced that the only way to grow was to contribute to society by developing more leaders. She can advance to the next level if they can take her seat.
She supports them so that they can grow.
She believes that there is no shortcut to success and your hard work will only help you achieve it. There is no substitute for hard work, and you can only achieve success through discipline. The younger generation lacks discipline, which they must develop if they want to be successful. Discipline can be defined as time, the manner in which one works or functions, or any error.
People nowadays lack patience to hear, understand, and give back, which is a significant difference between previous and current times. People jump to conclusions because they don’t want to hear and understand. You must greet your clients, vendors, and everyone in your vicinity. That’s when they return to you, which is a major concern about your attitude, and everything starts and begins from there. There is a lot of competition, whether it’s from vendors, architects, or anyone else, but we have to think outside the box. You have to work hard and put effort to achieve 100 percent. People want to stick to timings which wasn’t there so much earlier.
Communication gaps between internal teams, vendors, consultants, and clients will always be a major challenge. There is one thin line of communication gaps that will almost certainly force you to rework, redo, or rethink the process. She considers this to be the most difficult challenge in the industry. So, we all have faced the problem of internal communication gaps.
The second requirement is that we deliver the product with the same quality and timeliness that very few people do nowadays. That is something difficult. We are constantly attempting to repair it, but we are not always successful.
Anita has a very creative mind with many brilliant ideas. Her work ethic and commitment to making each space the best it can be served as our inspiration. She went on to discuss the challenges that arise and how success is achieved by believing in oneself in the right way.”
We are much better now than we were previously. Earlier we used to have more gaps because we di’t have the tools for creating groups and discussing things on WhatsApp. Many topics have been discussed in our small groups, and we have attempted to create as much as possible. We have Zoom calls and other tools that help us bring people together quickly. There are numerous communication tools available, but we often do not devote enough time to them because everyone is preoccupied with their jobs. We can’t devote all of our time to just one project. We must multitask in order to complete multiple projects. So that will always be difficult, but we must still fix it. To be continued >>