Speaking Walls - a Facebook page started by college kids turns into a successful business venture

Whether is it is the new rage of graphical tees or graphic novels or the increasing number of visitors to ComicCon year-on-year. Design is the new catchword. Websites like Happily Unmarried, PosterGully or the growing popular Chumbak seem to capture audiences and customers with their unique and catchy designs. Joining this roost of small yet growing number of graphic firms is Speaking Walls, a startup vent

Beginning with a Facebook Store

Speaking Walls was started by three fourth-year electronic engineering students from NIT Silchar -- Shreya Dalela, Ipshita Biswas, Anup Dutta and alumni Nitish Rajpurohit -- in February 2014. In college, the team saw several students would bring in posters from their native places, which were very unique and beautiful. These were a rage in college, so the team decided to start their own poster design venture using college graphic designers. Anup joined the team because of his love for graphic design, and soon became one of the core members of the team.

"We started Speaking Walls as a Facebook store for our college mates. We found there was a need and demand for unique poster designs. Within no time we started getting several orders; the very first day itself we got about 20 orders. The store was completely operative through Facebook. We’d put up the design and people would message in their orders," says Shreya.

Within a month of opening their Facebook page, they started receiving messages from others as well asking if they did delivery outside college. "This is when we came up with our Amazon Store. We didn't happen to know anything about the logistic details or shipping details. We took help for packaging from friends. Since Nitish was an alumnus at that time, he did all the running around so we could attend classes," adds Shreya.

Entering the business of e-commerce

When they started the Amazon Store, they had no idea how many orders they would receive, so they just opted for a more expensive shipping fare of Rs 33. They weren't aware there was a fare available at half the price. "Now we’ve learnt all of that and are working things out more effective and efficiently," says Shreya.

Talking about the problems they’ve faced, Shreya says, "The problem was about understanding the copyright issues regarding using images from the web. We had to study various forms of licenses so that we use only public domain commercially usable images. As we included more designers in the team, we were able to create some authentic artworks and designs that were made from scratch."

Within a few months of starting their store, orders started pouring in. With time, their innovations and ideas expanded from posters to photo books, greeting cards and artwork mail subscriptions. "We felt that designs are a way of inspiring people, so we’ve diverted into many aspects. In December, we designed our own website. That’s when Mohit joined our team and helped us in web development," says Shreya.

The Speaking Walls website was launched in January 2015 and in a month they receive an average of over 40 orders. "Since the Amazon Store is older, we receive around 3000 orders on an average from there," adds Shreya.

The team is even looking to diversify along with home and office interiors. "We’ve started with tees and these are doing really well. We’ve even used Instagram and the online space to market our products where we’ve been able to get people to click through to our website," says Shreya.

"We’re trying to diversify design into every possible thing. We’ve received a spot in ComicCon Bangalore this April, where we hope to pitch our interior design ideas. We have even tied up with gift art stores in Bangalore and Pune. We plan on starting a decoration hub where we would be laying down the decoration idea of the environment. The things we would provide are the decoration plan, the materials to be used and then get them delivered to the desired location like cafes, startup offices and special walls for rooms.”