Sourabh Saxena, Anjali Purohit,Meghna Kothari, Founders, Studio Thirsty Crow

Finding concurrence in the story’s simple transition of invention to innovation, NIFT students Sourabh Saxena and Anjali Purohit together with marketing professional Meghna Kothari came together in early 2009 to offer services in the arena of Design, Fashion and Management, applying their belief of designing thoughts into experience. 

The representation resulting in a design studio with a global clientele and projects which redefine applied design that work as extensions that interface our environment, function and experience. 

The idea holds huge scope as details Meghna, “As a design studio we not only design identities but work to create visual credibility in a brand for a consumer. Not only designing but product development are few powerful skills we posses. Our services are aimed at start-up’s as well as established brands from any industry who need a strategic and a visual makeover.” 

STC (Studio Thirsty Crow)’s unique proposition lies in its team structure – a global network of creative professionals seasoned into their areas of expertise who work as collaborators and mentors on different projects based on their skill sets and specialty. “We believe in enhancing an opportunity to its optimum and hence instead of restricting projects to in-house talent, we work with experts who add additional value through their extensive and unmatched knowledge.” quips in Anjali. That talented professionals seem to agree is now known given that in a short time, STC has already managed to build a network of 15-18 professionals from multiple fields ranging from interaction designers, business strategists, educationists, fashion and retail designers and others spread across the globe from countries like India, Italy, US and others. 

The fact that a model of this kind involves working with people across different time zones does not seem to be much hindrance as Anjali herself is settled in the US and the team through trials has learnt excellent time management and planning skills. Although it did bring about an initial functional challenge as it scaled down the availability of time as also crashed their schedules to a limited scope.

Yet the issue of operational time management seems trivial when seen in perspective of the bigger challenge faced by the young team – that of insecurity. Leaving stable, secure and money churning jobs to pursue creative passions can give cold feet even to the most daring of entrepreneurs and yet the associated fears were overcome by the simple virtue of finding strength in following a common passion together as a team. Indeed, the team believes that a mistake made, if any, has been in not starting earlier.

The thought is further elaborated by Sourabh, “A learning curve cannot be complete until you do not hold your own and that sense of feeling comes through creative freedom and entrepreneurship. We as individual professionals have worked for many years within the industry and have generated our contribution to it through someone else’s vision. A 9 to 5 job is an excellent platform of experimenting with yourself and realizing a path that you wish to create for the future. But the only shortcoming is that the job is originally someone else’s path and you can just support it but not drive it. We came together as we felt a lack of sense of belonging towards our passion.” 

It is perhaps the same vigour and enthusiasm that has seen STC being appreciated beyond just a few kind words. A US based client of the company, so impressed with the service has dedicated pages about the group in their brochure and investor proposals mentioning them as trusted suppliers. Such recognition is certainly indicative of a good start and the team envisions a steady growth which they measure in terms of the number of professionals they introduce within their network and see it rising by 40%. Their other efforts are focused on creating in-house design projects which eventually get converted into individual brands either as a service or product.

As they like to say, “Our design studio is not to look out for but to be a part of”

To budding entrepreneurs, they advice that entrepreneurship is about the power of the mind and belief one has in it and that it requires aligning your passions with opportunities that can serve the need of a market. “Do not let the market trends run your company, let your passion drive it” sign off the three.