Furniture fittings and interior solutions company Häfele has opened a new distribution centre in Nagold, Germany, expanding its global logistics capabilities with increased dispatch capacity, faster order processing and greater flexibility. For India and South Asia, the investment is expected to strengthen the Häfele India supply chain by supporting greater reliability and resilience, alongside the company’s growing local distribution, sourcing and manufacturing capabilities.
The new facility, part of Häfele’s Strategy 2030 and described by the company as its largest investment to date, introduces a goods-to-person picking system and adds around 15,000 storage spaces to a hub handling approximately 6,000 shipments a day. Upgraded processes and IT systems will also allow orders received late in the working day to be processed and dispatched the same day. Products sourced for India through Häfele’s European network are expected to benefit from the greater efficiency and flexibility created by the expanded logistics infrastructure.
“A stronger global network ultimately supports the reliability and resilience of our operations across markets,” Frank Schloeder, Managing Director, Häfele South Asia, told Sourcing Hardware.
In India, the global network is complemented by four warehouses and more than 180 distributors who stock products closer to the markets they serve. Häfele is also increasing local sourcing and manufacturing, including the commencement of local production in Maharashtra, as it looks to reduce dependence on imports and respond more efficiently to market requirements.
Strengthening The Global Network While Building Locally
For Häfele, the global and local parts of its supply chain are increasingly connected. Products sourced through its European network can benefit from greater efficiency and flexibility at the global level, while local sourcing and manufacturing give the company greater control over how it responds to requirements in India.
“In India, this global network is complemented by a strong local distribution infrastructure,” Schloeder said.
The approach is not limited to a particular product category. Instead, Häfele is looking to balance its global sourcing capabilities with a stronger local supply base as its portfolio and business in the region grow.
“This balanced sourcing approach is becoming increasingly important as our portfolio and business in the region continue to grow,” Schloeder said.
Local Manufacturing Becomes Part Of The Growth Strategy
Schloeder described India as a “strategically important growth market” for Häfele. The commencement of local production in Maharashtra is part of the company’s effort to build local value addition, develop expertise and establish the processes and supply-chain ecosystem required to support long-term growth.
As these capabilities develop, local manufacturing is expected to become an increasingly important part of the Häfele India supply chain, complementing products sourced through the company’s global network.
As its local capabilities scale, Häfele expects to progressively expand its localisation and manufacturing footprint while continuing to leverage its global network.
“This combination of global expertise and stronger local capabilities will be important in supporting the next phase of our growth in the region,” Schloeder said.
Resource Efficiency Extends To The Supply Chain
The Nagold facility also incorporates resource-efficiency measures, including reduced packaging material and lower transport volumes. Häfele sees similar principles applying to how it develops its Indian supply chain.
“Bringing more of our sourcing and production closer to the market can help reduce unnecessary movement of goods while creating a more efficient operating model,” Schloeder said.
For the Häfele India supply chain, the objective is to combine stronger global logistics with growing local capabilities to make operations “more agile and responsive to evolving market requirements” while strengthening resilience across India and South Asia.
When young people think about career opportunities in furniture and interiors, they usually imagine one of two roles: interior designer or carpenter. In reality, the industry supports a much larger and more interconnected career ecosystem, extending from the first customer enquiry and site measurement to design, product engineering, manufacturing, quality control, installation and final handover.
My recent interaction with young participants at the Furniture and Fittings Skill Council’s Udaipur Chapter reinforced a significant concern: career opportunities in furniture and interiors are becoming more specialised and diverse, but we have not communicated them clearly enough to the next generation.
The future of furniture and interiors will not be built by designers alone. It will require people who can connect design thinking with technology, materials, manufacturing intelligence, project execution and customer experience.
A Career Ecosystem Hidden Behind the Final Interior
Customers see the completed kitchen, wardrobe or home interior. They rarely see the number of professionals involved in creating it.
The journey can involve business development and sales professionals, site measurement executives, drafts people, interior and project designers and visualisation specialists. Behind them are technical product designers and design engineers who use specialised CAD-to- CAM systems to convert creative proposals into manufacturable components.
Once a design reaches manufacturing, production planners, machine operators, CNC programmers, quality professionals, material planners and product-development teams come into play. At the execution stage, site supervisors, project managers, installers and quality inspectors ensure that what was designed and manufactured is installed correctly.
Many of these roles offer clear paths for professional growth, yet they remain almost invisible to students.
A young person might begin as a site measurement executive and progress into project design or execution management. An installer can become a lead installer, trainer or installation-quality manager. A junior designer can specialise in sales, technical product design, manufacturing integration, category management or team leadership.
The industry must present these not as isolated jobs, but as connected career pathways.
Why has the Industry Struggled to Communicate These Opportunities?
Furniture and interiors in India have historically developed through a highly fragmented ecosystem. A large part of the sector has operated through individual designers, contractors, carpenters, local workshops and small retailers.
Consequently, roles were rarely formalised. One person often handled measurement, design, estimation, procurement and site supervision. Skills were learned informally, job titles varied between companies and career progression was not always documented.
Educational institutions have also tended to focus more heavily on the creative and aesthetic side of interior design. Students learn space planning, colours, materials and presentation, but often receive limited exposure to manufacturing systems, production drawings, hardware engineering, costing, installation, quality processes and project economics.
This creates a serious perception gap. Young people see the glamour of the finished interior, but not the industrial and technical system behind it.
The industry needs to communicate more clearly that furniture and interiors combine creativity with engineering, technology and business; that a successful career does not require everyone to become an interior designer; and that installation and site-based careers are specialised professional roles deserving training, dignity and visible career progression.
Technology is Changing Every Role, not Only Creating New Ones
Technology is gradually bringing lead management, site measurement, space planning, design configuration, quotation, BOM and BOQ generation, manufacturing, logistics, installation tracking and final handover into a more integrated digital journey.
A change made in design can influence the quotation, material requirement and manufacturing data. Production status can connect with delivery planning, while site teams can access updated drawings and installation information digitally. This integration changes what is expected from people entering the industry.
A designer can no longer remain concerned only with appearance; the designer must understand whether a concept is measurable, manufacturable, cost-effective, installable and serviceable. A site measurement professional must understand how incorrect dimensions affect design, production and installation. Technical product designers need knowledge of materials, hardware, machining, tolerances and software logic. Installers increasingly need to interpret technical drawings, work with precision hardware and use digital systems to document site conditions and report issues.
Technology is therefore not simply replacing manual work. It is raising the minimum level of understanding required in almost every role.
Artificial Intelligence Will Further Raise the Capability Threshold
Artificial intelligence is entering the interiors journey, from lead qualification and customer communication to concept generation, visualisation, product recommendation, estimation, documentation and project monitoring.
This does not mean human capability will become less important. Routine activities may take less time, while judgement, accountability and problem-solving become more valuable.
AI may generate multiple kitchen concepts, but a professional must still decide which proposal suits the customer’s space, budget, lifestyle and cooking habits. Software may produce a BOM, but someone must understand whether the construction logic is correct.
The roles most likely to remain important are those that combine human intelligence with a well-developed skill. Creativity without technical understanding will be insufficient. Technical knowledge without customer sensitivity will also be insufficient. The future belongs to professionals who can connect both.
What Young People Currently Misunderstand
My interaction with young participants in Udaipur suggested that many still perceive the industry through conventional and relatively narrow categories. Interior design is frequently understood as drawing, decoration and software presentation. Manufacturing and installation are seen as separate activities rather than extensions of the design process.
There is also a belief that completing a design degree or learning one or two software programs is sufficient preparation for a career. It is not.
A degree can provide an important foundation, but employability will increasingly depend on whether a young professional can understand the complete journey, from the customer brief to final handover.
Young people do not need to become experts in every function. They do, however, need enough cross-functional knowledge to understand how their decisions affect the rest of the value chain. The industry needs professionals who are specialists in their own areas but are not isolated from the larger process.
As the industry becomes more organised and technology-led, career opportunities in furniture and interiors are likely to expand further across both existing and emerging functions.
The Roles That Will Gain Importance Over the Next Three to Five Years
Several areas are likely to become particularly important:
Design technologists: Professionals who can connect creative design software with technical design, costing and manufacturing systems.
Technical product designers and product engineers: People who understand construction logic, hardware, materials, machining and CAD-to-CAM workflows.
Site measurement and digital surveying specialists: Professionals capable of converting real site conditions into accurate and reliable digital inputs.
Project integrators: People who can coordinate design, factory, vendors, logistics, installation and customer expectations.
Installation specialists and trainers: As products become more engineered, installation quality will increasingly determine the final customer experience.
Quality and process professionals: Executives and managers who can establish checkpoints across design, manufacturing, packaging, delivery and installation.
Category and product managers: Professionals who combine market understanding, consumer behaviour, material knowledge, pricing, sourcing and portfolio strategy.
AI-enabled sales and design professionals: People who use technology to respond faster while retaining empathy, judgement and consultative ability.
Material and sustainability specialists: Professionals who can evaluate substrates, surfaces, hardware, durability, environmental performance and responsible material choices.
Service and lifecycle managers: As organised interior brands grow, post-installation service, maintenance and product lifecycle management will become increasingly important.
Preparing for a Career in the New Interiors Industry
A young person entering the industry today should begin with one strong foundational skill — design, engineering, manufacturing, sales, installation or project management — and then develop an understanding of the connected functions.
They should become comfortable with digital tools, but avoid confusing software proficiency with professional capability. Software can execute instructions; it cannot replace material understanding, construction knowledge, spatial judgement or responsibility.
They should learn how furniture is actually made: visit factories, observe installations, study hardware and panel materials, read technical drawings and understand how design decisions behave on a real site.
Communication, collaboration and problem-solving are equally important. The furniture and interiors journey involves continuous coordination between customers, designers, factories, vendors and site teams.
Most importantly, young people should become active learners. The tools used by the industry will continue to change. The ability to learn, adapt and connect new technology with practical knowledge will be more valuable than expertise in any single software platform.
The Industry Must Tell a Better Career Story
Furniture and interiors can become one of India’s most exciting employment ecosystems because they combine design, technology, manufacturing, craftsmanship, business and human experience. Yet the breadth of career opportunities in furniture and interiors remains poorly understood.
But young people cannot aspire to careers they cannot see.
Companies, educational institutions, industry bodies and skill councils must work together to define roles, create structured learning pathways and demonstrate visible examples of career progression. Factory visits, site exposure, apprenticeships, technical workshops and interaction with working professionals should become central to career education.
The message to the next generation should be clear: this is not merely an industry for people who want to decorate spaces. It is an industry for designers, engineers, technologists, makers, managers, sellers, installers, trainers and problem-solvers.
The future professional will not be defined only by a degree or designation. They will be defined by their ability to combine human intelligence, specialised skill and technology to carry an idea successfully from design to manufacturing to installation.
That is where the real opportunity lies, and that is the career ecosystem the industry must now make visible.
Gopal Dwivedi is Chief Design Officer (Global) at Livspace and a modular interiors industry veteran with over two decades of experience spanning design, manufacturing, retail, technology and professional training. He has played a pioneering role in building scalable design-to-manufacturing systems in India and has trained and influenced thousands of interior design professionals through his work and authored books.
Pepperfry is expanding beyond its furniture-led business as it looks to build a broader home-products marketplace, while giving its retail partners a larger role in selling the expanded assortment. The Pepperfry home marketplace now extends across furniture, décor, furnishings, lighting, mattresses, kitchen and dining and other home categories, under its new “Fashion for Your Home” positioning.
The marketplace now spans more than 100,000 products across 150+ categories and includes more than 100 D2C and boutique design brands. More than 60% of Pepperfry’s transactions now come from home décor and home goods, according to the company.
The diversification comes as Pepperfry navigates a changing financial trajectory. The company reported turnover of ₹164.2 crore in FY25, down from ₹188.9 crore in FY24. It subsequently recorded its first profitable quarter in Q4 FY26, even as it continues to expand its retail footprint and broaden its home-products marketplace.
Kulbhushan Atkar, Chief Revenue Officer at Pepperfry, told Sourcing Hardware that the change reflects a larger shift in how Indians think about their homes. “Our homes have become a direct extension of our personal style, evolving tastes, and individual stories,” he said.
Building the Pepperfry Home Marketplace Beyond Furniture
Pepperfry’s broader proposition is built around its ambition to “democratize this design-led lifestyle” for Indian consumers. Atkar said the company wants to offer a “massive, highly curated catalogue to discover, experiment, and own”, bringing together products and brands across different styles and price points.
The marketplace includes D2C and boutique design brands such as Orange Tree, Kapoor Lampshades, Chumbak and Jaipur Rugs. Atkar sees these design-led brands and high-frequency home accessories as an important part of Pepperfry’s opportunity as the marketplace expands.
The proposition is also being built across multiple channels. Along with Pepperfry.com, customers can access the assortment through its 140+ Experience Studios and newer commerce platforms, including quick-commerce apps. The aim, Atkar said, is to create a “seamless ecosystem where modern design meets everyday living.”
The company has also brought the new positioning into its brand communication, with Kiara Advani and Sidharth Malhotra as its brand ambassadors. Atkar described them as representing the new generation of Indian homeowners — “urban, discerning” consumers looking for homes that are stylish, functional and personalised.
Consumer Behaviour is Changing
The strategy is being shaped by a change in how consumers buy for their homes. Pepperfry’s Home Report Card 2025 found that “living rooms emerged as the most socially expressive space in Indian homes”, with living-room furniture seeing higher engagement as consumers made more planned upgrades. It also found that sofas are now being replaced roughly once every four years.
Atkar said home retail was traditionally treated as a “utilitarian, functional chore”. Consumers are now approaching home design with greater self-expression and curation, much like they do with their personal wardrobe.
“Home decoration is no longer a stagnant, one-time investment,” Atkar said. Consumers are increasingly making seasonal and style-led changes through décor, lighting, textiles, wall accents and tableware.
He sees three changes behind this shift: the rise of the high-frequency home shopper, greater comfort with digital discovery and the premiumisation of everyday spaces.
“Indian consumers have become incredibly sophisticated digital shoppers,” Atkar said, with consumers increasingly comfortable browsing wider assortments online and discovering global aesthetics through social media.
At the same time, “visual appeal is now a non-negotiable priority,” he said, as rising aspirations across metros and Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities drive greater attention to the look and feel of everyday spaces.
For Pepperfry, this means the opportunity is no longer limited to selling a sofa, bed or dining table every few years. The larger opportunity is to become part of the consumer’s ongoing home-shopping journey, with the Pepperfry home marketplace extending the relationship into more frequent purchases.
Building the Proposition Around Choice and Fulfilment
With its broader assortment, Pepperfry is focusing on curating different styles, price points and design sensibilities across furniture, décor, furnishings, lighting, mattresses, kitchen and dining and other home categories. Its partnerships with premium and emerging D2C brands bring new aesthetics, materials, styles and trends to the marketplace.
The approach also extends to the wider partner ecosystem. Pepperfry works with brands, manufacturers and service partners, using technology, defined processes and quality standards to bring greater consistency to the customer experience. The company also owns the post-order fulfilment journey, including its warehouses, supply chain, logistics and assembly services.
Retail is the Implementation Layer
Pepperfry is using its physical network and omnichannel model to put this broader strategy into practice.
The company currently has a physical presence across 80 cities and plans to add 35 new stores during the festive season, taking it closer to its near-term ambition of more than 250 physical retail outlets across India.
At India Kitchen Congress 2026, Pepperfry founder and CEO Ashish Shah had earlier discussed the role of franchising, customer experience and technology in building a scalable national retail network.
The stores are also changing in role. As Pepperfry expands beyond furniture, its physical locations are becoming more commerce-enabled, allowing customers to access the company’s wider marketplace assortment rather than being limited to products displayed in the store.
The company’s omnichannel model allows customers to discover products online, visit a store to see them in person, use assisted buying and complete the purchase through whichever channel works best for them.
For Pepperfry’s channel partners, dealers and franchisees, this broader proposition creates another opportunity. As stores move from being primarily experience-led spaces towards more commercially enabled retail destinations, partners can access the Pepperfry home marketplace while leveraging its digital platform, technology, brand and supply-chain capabilities.
The changing role of Pepperfry’s partners reflects a wider shift towards more solution-led retail models, where brands are enabling channel partners to offer a broader customer experience.
Atkar summed up the proposition for partners simply: “You can consider Pepperfry stores now as a mall where customers get to see varied selections from 100+ brands.”
This gives franchisees and other retail partners a larger product universe to sell without requiring them to physically stock the entire assortment. Pepperfry’s digital marketplace and supply chain can support the wider selection, while the local partner continues to bring market knowledge and customer relationships.
Technology is the layer connecting these parts of the business. As the assortment grows, Pepperfry is using data, AI and personalisation to improve product discovery, while its One Funnel omnichannel model connects online discovery, physical stores and assisted buying. Technology also supports catalogue management, inventory visibility, fulfilment, supply chain and partner management.
The company’s physical and digital businesses are therefore intended to reinforce each other: stores provide discovery, trust and customer acquisition, while the digital platform gives customers access to a much wider assortment.
Shezaan Bhojani, co-founder of DesignCafe, has launched Fixxly for building materials, a quick-commerce platform that enables contractors working at ongoing project sites to order materials and have them delivered directly to the location. The platform launches in Bengaluru on September 1 with a 30-minute delivery proposition.
Fixxly is launching with 1,800+ SKUs across categories including paint, plywood, hardware, hinges, cables, switch boxes, lighting, fans, pipes and CP fittings. Hyderabad is expected to follow, before the company moves into other markets.
The proposition is also designed for small, immediate requirements: Fixxly says there is no minimum order, allowing contractors to buy only what they need for a job. On its website, Fixxly describes the proposition as “quick commerce for repair & maintenance”.
The venture is backed by about $5.5 million in seed funding from Accel, Lightspeed Ventures and Fireside Ventures. But Bhojani is betting on more than speed. Speaking to Sourcing Hardware ahead of the launch, he said the larger opportunity is to make building-material procurement more predictable — through better product availability, transparent pricing, authenticity and dependable delivery.
“30 minutes is a table stake,” Bhojani said. “The core proposition is quick delivery when you need it, but the right product at the right price also.”
India’s building-material market is still largely driven by fragmented distribution, local suppliers and relationships. For contractors working at an ongoing site, a missing fitting, sheet, cable or plumbing component can mean calling multiple suppliers, sending someone to a nearby market or store, and holding up work until the material arrives.
Fixxly wants to change that experience. “The whole idea is to make the contractor’s life easier. You get the material when you need it, you know the price upfront and you know the product is genuine,” Bhojani said.
Building for Scale
Bhojani comes to Fixxly after having co-founded home interiors company DesignCafe with Gita Ramanan, a business that was subsequently acquired by HomeLane. That experience gave him a close view of the challenges involved in managing materials, supply chains and execution across interior project sites — and of what it takes to scale a consumer-facing business.
As he builds Fixxly for building materials, Bhojani is drawing on a five-member founding team with experience spanning supply chain, retail, brands, logistics and technology.
Alongside Bhojani, the team includes Sachith Varma, who previously headed supply chain at Zepto; Manasa S, who headed brand and loyalty at Asian Paints; Mayar Rizvi, who has worked with Walmart and Hippo Stores; and Sarthak Patnaik, who previously headed product at Shadowfax.
For Bhojani, that experience matters because identifying a customer problem and building a business capable of solving it at scale are two different challenges. “There are two parts to building any business. One is understanding the customer pain point and understanding the problem and creating a solution. The other thing is scaling the solution,” he said.
“All five of us have seen and built scale.” The experience, he added, goes beyond understanding the customer problem to the architecture of building the business itself — how supply chain, technology, assortment and fulfillment come together as the company grows.
Bhojani sees Fixxly’s investors playing a similar role. Their value, he said, extends beyond the capital they provide to the insights and longer-term perspective they bring to the business. “The vision we have is not for six months, or three months, or one year,” he said. “We are thinking, okay, what’s in 10 years, what will be the shape of business, and how do we get to that shape?”
Making Building-material Buying More Predictable
The market Bhojani is targeting with Fixxly for building materials presents a different challenge from consumer quick commerce.
Contractors do not simply need products quickly. They need the right material to be available when required, at a price they understand, with confidence over its quality and authenticity. Much of that buying today remains dependent on local suppliers, dealer networks and individual relationships.
Bhojani points to the large unorganised component of the market as part of the opportunity. Except for categories such as cement, steel, paint and adhesives, he said the unorganised segment accounts for more than 50% of India’s building-material ecosystem.
For brands, he believes this creates a distribution gap, particularly when it comes to reaching smaller contractors. “Which means that the brand is not able to go to the smallest contractor,” Bhojani said, pointing to limitations in distribution and dealer reach. “So we will offer brands a path to increase their distribution.”
Importantly, Fixxly does not necessarily need to bypass the existing distribution structure to do this. The company can procure directly from brands or work through their existing distributors, effectively creating an additional digital route through which products can reach contractors.
That could also create opportunities for challenger brands that do not have the distribution depth of larger players. Bhojani believes Fixxly can give both established and emerging brands another way to reach contractors, while giving contractors access to a wider assortment of branded products.
For the contractor, the proposition is also about creating greater consistency between large and small buyers. Bhojani describes the objective as “levelling the playing field”. Fixxly says there is no minimum order, and Bhojani adds that the price displayed on the platform would remain the same whether a contractor buys five sheets of plywood or 500.
“Our goal is to give the best product to the customer at the best price,” he said. “The need we are solving for is bringing the same reliability and transparency to building material that exists in FMCG.”
Building the Infrastructure Behind Quick Delivery
Making Fixxly for building materials work at scale requires more than putting products on an app. Fixxly is building a network of dark stores, with multiple stores planned within a city so that inventory can be positioned closer to contractors and delivery distances can be reduced.
The company will also use a dedicated fulfillment fleet through a fulfillment partner, with the initial fleet expected to comprise more than 20 vehicles.
The assortment is intended to address another limitation of neighbourhood procurement: the number of products immediately available to a contractor. By bringing together products across multiple building-material categories within its fulfillment network, Fixxly is betting that availability and assortment can become as important as delivery speed.
Technology will sit behind much of this infrastructure. Bhojani describes Fixxly as “AI native on day one”, with artificial intelligence being used in areas including inventory planning, demand planning and customer cohort analysis.
The objective is to understand what contractors are likely to need, where that demand is likely to emerge and consequently what products should be stocked closer to them.
A New Route for Brands — Not Necessarily a Replacement for Distribution
Fixxly is not alone in seeing an opportunity in quick commerce for building materials. Digital procurement of building materials is already drawing startup activity and strategic capital. In 2025, Somany Impresa Group invested ₹6 crore in Mad Over Buildings, a B2B e-commerce platform combining building-material procurement with financing and same-day delivery.
Bhojani acknowledges that other players are experimenting with similar models, but views competition as validation rather than a threat to the category. His argument is that the opportunity need not come entirely from shifting existing business from distributors or retailers to digital platforms.
If platforms such as Fixxly can give contractors easier access to branded products that they might otherwise have bought from the unorganised market, he believes they can also help expand the market available to brands.
He draws a parallel with consumer quick commerce, where digital platforms have enabled brands to reach consumers and buying occasions that traditional retail may not always capture. Building materials, he believes, could see a similar shift.
That makes the proposition broader than simply delivering the same material faster. For brands, Fixxly wants to become another route to contractors. For contractors, it wants to reduce some of the uncertainty around availability, pricing, authenticity and delivery that remains part of everyday procurement.
And that is also why Bhojani does not ultimately define success around whether every order arrives in exactly 30 minutes. When asked what would constitute Fixxly’s biggest failure, his answer was straightforward. “If I am disappointing my customer, that is my biggest failure.”
Whether that disappointment comes from delivery time, the wrong assortment, price or the product itself makes little difference, he said. “If my customer NPS is not very high, and if the customer is not ordering from me again, that’s a failure.”
For Fixxly, therefore, the 30-minute promise may be what first gets attention. The larger bet is that contractors will return because buying building materials from an ongoing project site has become more dependable.
Branding has long been associated with selling — a name, a logo, an advertising campaign and a promise to the consumer. In ‘Brand as Behaviour: Why the CEO Must Become the First Exemplar’, Thomas Xavier argues that brands can do much more than shape a purchase decision. They can become a platform for the business itself, influencing how it operates, how its people behave and, most importantly, how its leadership is experienced.
Speaking during a session at the India Kitchen Congress 2026, Xavier – Principal at Transformer Brand Services – argued that the strongest brands are not created through communication alone. They are built through behaviour, with the leader becoming the first and most visible expression of what the brand stands for. “The best leaders in the world know how to be the best exemplar of the brand,” he said.
Through examples ranging from Captain Gopinath and Air Deccan to Dhruv Agarwal of Stahl and Sumant of Ivory Sense, Xavier’s framework explores how leaders can move from brand as communication to brand as behaviour and ultimately become the first exemplar of the brand they are building.
The CEO Gives the Business Its Language
For Xavier, a brand becomes powerful when a business can find the right language to express what it stands for beyond its product or service. He believes businesses need to define themselves not merely as commercial propositions, but potentially as a cause or a movement that can capture the imagination of employees, customers and other stakeholders.
Talking about Captain Gopinath and his brand Air Deccan, he explained that the business idea was straightforward: launch a low-fare airline in India. Coming from advertising and branding, Xavier was looking for an emotional hook that could give the business a stronger identity.
Gopinath, meanwhile, was trying to get the necessary approvals from Delhi and was finding little traction. One day, frustrated with the lack of interest, he told Xavier, “Here I’m trying to make the common man fly, and nobody in Delhi is interested.”
For Xavier, those words changed the proposition. “Captain, that’s what you’re doing. It’s not a low-fare airline. You are making the common man fly,” he told him.
The idea gave the business a language. Instead of simply talking about a cheaper airline, Gopinath could talk about why flying should not be restricted to the wealthy.
Xavier recalls how that shift changed the way people responded to the business. As Gopinath spoke about activating India’s more than 800 airports, drawing on his experience in the defence sector, the idea began to have relevance for MPs and communities that wanted better connectivity. It also gave employees frustrated with legacy airlines a reason to see the new venture as something they could believe in.
For Xavier, this is the power of finding the right language for a business. “Most times, when you are able to walk your brand as a leader, your business captures the imagination of people.”
The leader then has to take that language forward and become its evangelist. “A business needs to find its language in terms of a mission or a cause, and the leader must be the evangelist for that.”
Purpose Has to Be More Than a Statement
For Xavier, purpose is not something a business can arrive at by simply writing a statement. It comes from understanding three things: the talent you want to build, what makes your business stronger than the competition, and the challenge your client really needs you to solve.
Xavier brings these three questions together into a simple framework for defining purpose: “Take your talent, leverage your company’s strength, and serve the client’s challenge, you’ve got your purpose.”
That means identifying the qualities that define your best people, the traits you would want to multiply across the organisation; understanding what makes the business genuinely different beyond the usual answers around price, technology or product; and going deeper into the client’s challenge to understand what they really need.
“The best listeners go beyond the skin, ask deeper questions, and finally know that, you know what? The client doesn’t realise, but this is what the real challenge is, and I’m going to solve for it,” he said.
Bringing these three together can move a business beyond a generic purpose statement towards something that can actually energise the organisation. “When you really craft it well, across your company, you can see the difference,” he said.
But finding the purpose is only the beginning. Turning brand as behaviour into reality requires actions that make the purpose visible and tangible across the business. Xavier believes this is where a brand moves beyond communication and becomes behaviour, through the way a company expresses its story, builds its culture and, ultimately, how its leaders embody what the brand stands for.
That is where the CEO becomes the first exemplar of the brand.
The Brand Must Mean Something to the Leader
A strong brand needs a founder who has a genuine emotional connection with what the business is trying to create. For Xavier, “you need to have an emotional connect with what you do,” something that resonates with the founder and can be kept alive over time.
He illustrates this through Dhruv Agarwal, founder of Stahl, a cookware brand based in Pune. After spending four to five years studying in Germany, Dhruv returned to India with cookware from the German family he had lived with. As Dhruv told Xavier, “I didn’t care for cooking, but I found that I could enjoy cooking simply because of the cookware.”
Dhruv’s father was already involved in the cookware industry, so he understood the shortcomings of Indian cookware. He went on to engineer the product for India and introduce tri-ply technology. But over time, his enthusiasm for the business began to wane. In conversations with Xavier, they found the emotional connection he had with the category: Dhruv did not see cookware simply as cookware. He saw it as a creative tool.
This led to Dhruv’s belief that “exceptional design has the power to transform routine tasks into joyful rituals.” Stahl’s purpose therefore became bigger than making cookware – it was about reimagining the kitchen as a space for creativity and self-expression, where every day routines could become moments of inspiration and joy.
Even product innovation is viewed through this lens. The technology was important, but Xavier’s point was that Dhruv interpreted it through the freedom it gave the user to cook bindas, without worrying about scratches or handling the cookware too carefully.
For Xavier, that is what makes the founder-brand connection powerful: when something is emotionally resonant with the founder, it becomes something they can keep alive — and that belief can give the brand a much deeper meaning.
The Brand Defines the Talent You Need
If brand as behaviour is to extend across the organisation, leaders also need to understand the kind of talent their business actually needs. As Xavier said, “Talent is talent. When you want a cricket player, you want someone who can bat or bowl. You should know what you’re looking for.”
He believes every business has certain qualities that its strongest performers consistently demonstrate. The challenge is to identify those qualities and understand what you would want to multiply or bottle and give around across the organisation. That question becomes particularly important as businesses grapple with a wider workforce challenge: hiring people is only one part of building the capability an organisation needs.
Talking about his own experience in advertising, he explained – an account management professional may need to be organised, but at the heart of the role, Xavier believes, they need to be a clear thinker — someone who can make a decision after considering the options. A creative professional, on the other hand, needs to be comfortable with free association and generating a barrage of ideas.
Xavier believes leaders need to identify the trait that makes their best people exceptional and then build around it. This became particularly clear in his work with Sumanth of Ivory Sense, a Bengaluru-based building automation and solution-integration company. Despite hiring technically qualified people, Sumanth felt that execution often fell short. Through their conversations, they identified what he was really looking for: sensitivity to design.
For Sumanth, technical qualifications alone were not enough. He wanted people who cared enough about design to notice when something as small as a crooked switch or thermostat was wrong and who would take responsibility for fixing it.
That became a defining quality for Ivory Sense. As Xavier puts it, “A champion solution integrator who is relentlessly sensitive to design” became the kind of professional Sumanth wanted to build the company around.
The Brand Must Articulate What Makes You Different
Competitiveness cannot simply come down to the usual answers around price, technology or scale. Leaders need to go beyond the obvious and identify what their business does differently enough to create an “aha” moment, Xavier emphasized.
He describes this as the possibility of creating a kind of creative monopoly — identifying something others may not have recognised as a source of competitive advantage.
He explained this through the Ivory Sense example, stating that the company often works with RFPs where architects have already specified what they want. But Sumanth realised that simply delivering the brief was not necessarily the company’s strength. Its real strength was in questioning the brief and uncovering what the client had not articulated.
Instead of simply responding, “Here is the best version of what you asked for,” the team would push the conversation further and explore what the client was actually trying to achieve. Sometimes architects would reject the proposed solution, but they would still come back with the sense that Ivory Sense had advanced their thinking by questioning the question.
For Xavier, that is a much stronger competitive position than simply claiming to offer better solutions.
He also believes leaders should ask a less conventional question: “Who’s your enemy?” That does not necessarily mean a direct competitor. It could be an ideological enemy — an established way of thinking, a category convention or something the business believes should change.
What makes you stronger than the competition is therefore a question leaders need to answer beyond conventional vocabulary. The answer should be specific enough to make the organisation recognise, this is what makes us different.
Xavier also offers a caution. A powerful brand idea cannot compensate for a business that is unable to sustain what the brand promises. Recalling his experience with Subhiksha, he argued that the supermarket found a compelling language around fighting needless spending, but expanded faster than the business could support. “Sometimes great messaging can make a bad product fail faster,” he said. The brand idea, in other words, still has to be backed by the business.
Xavier believes a business has to be able to articulate what it stands for in a way that people can understand, remember and believe in. Every business, however ordinary or generic, should be able to tell its story in a way that makes people stop and listen.
As he says, every business should have a TED-like talk, “an eight-minute version of its story that can make people say, wow”. A manifesto, a creation story and a clear understanding of what the brand stands for can help turn its purpose into something people can experience.
The CEO has to be able to explain why the business exists, what it believes in, what it is trying to change and why it matters.
That is when brand as behaviour moves beyond an idea and becomes something the organisation actually lives, with the CEO as its first exemplar.
As IndiaSkills 2026–27 gets underway, implementing WorldSkills standards in furniture trades—such as cabinetmaking, carpentry, and joinery—is proving to be a game-changer for shopfloor productivity. Furniture & Fittings Skill Council is mobilising competitors and industry support for the three woodworking skills. Registrations are currently open across more than 60 skills under IndiaSkills 2026–27.
For Rahul Mehta, CEO of FFSC, however, the significance of these competitions goes well beyond identifying medal winners. They offer the furniture industry a very different way of thinking about skill itself — how it is defined, taught, measured and ultimately carried into the workplace.
“This is perhaps the most important point to understand,” says Mehta. “In India, the conventional trade encompassed everything to do with wood largely as carpentry.” Internationally, that broad definition gives way to specialisation.
“Much like we have specialisation in medicine, like different types of doctors, similarly there are different types of woodworkers — joiner, cabinetmaker and carpenter.”
In WorldSkills terminology, Carpentry is primarily associated with timber construction and installation; Joinery with the workshop production and fitting of components such as doors, windows and stairs; and Cabinetmaking with the manufacture of high-quality furniture and built-in units, where precision, materials, fit and finish assume particular importance.
The distinction is more than terminology. It goes to the heart of how a skilled professional is trained and expected to perform.
From Informal Skill to WorldSkills Standards in Furniture
“In India, for the longest period, carpenters have learnt things on the job, in an informal manner from their senior — in a guru-shishya, mentor-mentee model,” he says. That system has created generations of craftspeople. But it does not necessarily create common standards. “The chances that two carpenters from different regions work in the same manner or follow the same principles are less.”
Competition-level preparation is fundamentally different. “To be a competition-ready professional at WorldSkills, candidates have to learn to do it all as per a defined curriculum and standard: independently understand the drawing, plan the work, select the appropriate tools and materials, work within defined tolerances and deliver a high-quality outcome within a fixed time.”
Competitors from Japan, Korea or India may have somewhat different working styles, he says, but they are working to common guiding principles. “The distinction lies in the combination of precision, process discipline, speed, safety and consistency.”
For Mehta, this is where WorldSkills standards in furniture become relevant to a manufacturer who may have little interest in competitions themselves. “These are not abstract abilities. They directly influence material wastage, rework, production timelines, installation quality and customer satisfaction.”
India’s Medal of Excellence in Cabinetmaking at WorldSkills 2024, he says, demonstrated that Indian candidates can perform to high international standards when they receive the right preparation, exposure and industry support. “The opportunity now is to make these practices more widely accessible across the sector.”
What Competition Can Teach the Shopfloor
A competition does not assess a participant simply on whether the finished piece looks good or whether the task gets completed. Candidates are evaluated on how accurately they interpret drawings, measure and prepare components, use tools and machinery, manage time and materials, achieve the required finish and maintain safe working practices.
“We have often seen at the IndiaSkills and WorldSkills level that just completing the module or project doesn’t guarantee that a candidate will score higher or win. They need to check all the boxes.” That discipline, he believes, provides a foundation for the work that subsequently happens on the shopfloor — and eventually at higher levels within an organisation.
A manufacturer does not need every employee to operate at WorldSkills level. But Mehta believes businesses can learn from the system that produces competition-level performance. “Every business can benefit from applying the underlying principles: clearer job roles, structured training, defined quality expectations and better supervision.”
He says he has experienced the impact himself, both in his previous manufacturing organisation and through WorldSkills competitors who subsequently joined FFSC as trainers. “With more and more candidates who are trained on the standards, our furniture industry is destined to raise its working standards, and thus productivity.”
For FFSC, therefore, the opportunity is not simply to produce better competitors. It is to translate competition learnings into workforce standards, training programmes and industry-facing tools that companies can use in their everyday operations.
Not Just a Competition, But a Career
There is another problem competitions can potentially address: the way woodworking careers are perceived. “One of the sector’s biggest challenges is that woodworking and furniture-related occupations are often viewed as traditional trades with limited growth,” says Mehta.
The reality of the industry is changing. Design interpretation, specialised machinery, digital tools, precision manufacturing and skilled installation are increasingly part of the job. IndiaSkills and WorldSkills make some of that transformation visible.
“When young people see someone representing their state or country, working with advanced equipment and being recognised for technical excellence, the perception of the occupation begins to change.”
But Mehta is careful not to suggest that recognition or medals alone can make woodworking careers aspirational. “For families, recognition alone is not enough. They also need to see a credible pathway to training, employment, income growth and professional advancement.”
That, he believes, places responsibility back on institutions and industry. “We must connect aspiration with actual opportunities so that a young person can see not just a competition, but a career.”
The Experience That Changed His View of Skills
Mehta’s own association with WorldSkills began in 2016, before he joined FFSC. His previous organisation, I.EVO, was approached by FFSC to train the candidate who was to represent India in Cabinetmaking at WorldSkills for the first time.
“And I’m being very candid here,” he recalls. “Before that, none of us knew about the competition, let alone the rules, standards, magnitude, etc.”
As the preparation progressed, his team was learning too. “We realised that there is a lot to be done, and if we do it right, it will surely solve the problem of not being able to find the right talent in Indian industry. This could actually change the way of work as we know it.”
Then came WorldSkills Abu Dhabi. “What we experienced in Abu Dhabi, the competition venue, was mind-blowing.” Mehta encountered competitors and experts from countries that had been investing in skill competitions and workforce development not merely for a few years, but for decades.
One encounter stayed with him. “I met a 70-plus-year-old Japanese person who was in a wheelchair, along with his son, and both of them were cheering for a young Japanese lad competing in Cabinetmaking.”
Mehta learnt that the elderly man had himself once been a competitor and winner. His son had also competed. Their company, he says, had made promoting young talent a matter of policy. For him, this connection between that culture and the strength of the skilled workforce in developed economies was difficult to miss.
“One could connect the dots easily and confidently say what’s the core reason behind the strong workforce and ethics of the developed countries. It’s not by coincidence, but by design where they are today.”
Bringing Industry Into the Competition Ecosystem
When Mehta joined FFSC in 2019, he says attracting the right people into the competition ecosystem became a personal mission. “We started onboarding WorldSkills and IndiaSkills candidates in FFSC, reaching out to industry experts and orienting them about the competitions, and more.”
Participation has grown. FFSC now has more experts, workshop managers and companies involved in supporting competitions. But Mehta believes the ecosystem remains small relative to the size of India’s furniture industry. “We are still just getting started.”
That is also the context for FFSC’s current call for industry experts for Cabinetmaking, Carpentry and Joinery, supported by trainers and training infrastructure. Experts can help identify promising candidates, guide technical preparation, mentor trainers and participants, review practice tasks, support mock assessments and improve training infrastructure.
Companies can nominate experienced professionals, provide access to workshops and machinery, contribute materials and consumables, host practice sessions or provide technical mentorship. “What we are looking for is meaningful involvement over the preparation cycle, not merely attendance on the competition day.”
And industry involvement need not be restricted to furniture manufacturers. Machinery manufacturers, material suppliers, designers and training institutions can all contribute equipment, expertise, demonstrations and structured learning opportunities.
For employers, there may also be a more direct benefit. “A participant’s ability to read drawings, solve problems, manage time, work accurately and respond under pressure provides strong evidence of professional potential.”
Those are capabilities that can be difficult to establish through a conventional recruitment interview. Companies that become involved early can therefore not only support promising candidates, but also see them develop before they enter the workforce.
When Competitors Come Back
For Mehta, however, a skill competition should never end with the competition. “A competition should not be treated as the end of the journey. Its real value depends on what happens afterwards.”
Participants leave with more than competition experience. They have been exposed to technical precision, process discipline, problem-solving, advanced methods and the pressure of performing against defined standards. Some move into employment, apprenticeships or specialised manufacturing roles. Others can progress into advanced training, entrepreneurship, technical supervision or eventually mentoring another generation.
FFSC has been deliberately trying to bring some of that experience back into its own ecosystem. Since 2019, it has sought to create a pool of former IndiaSkills and WorldSkills participants who combine competition exposure with the skills and mindset to contribute to training and future competitions.
Three of them are now working with FFSC on its WorldSkills Mission: Keshar Singh, who competed in Cabinetmaking at WorldSkills 2019; Hrithik Patra, who competed in Joinery at IndiaSkills 2022; and Gulshan Kumar, who competed in Joinery at WorldSkills 2024.
Other former competitors now working across the furniture industry return during subsequent IndiaSkills and WorldSkills cycles as experts, jury members and workshop managers.
This begins to create the kind of cycle Mehta first witnessed in Abu Dhabi: people who have experienced WorldSkills standards in furniture passing that knowledge and culture to those who come after them. FFSC’s effort, he says, is to connect competition pathways with industry engagement, training opportunities and career progression so that the benefits extend beyond medals.
Mehta was named IKC Person of the Year 2026 at India Kitchen Congress earlier this year, in recognition of his contribution to advancing skilling and workforce development in India’s furniture industry.
For India’s furniture industry, that may ultimately be the bigger opportunity. WorldSkills establishes a benchmark for individual excellence. But if the standards, processes and people created around competition flow back into factories, training institutions and the next generation of workers, the impact can extend much further — into the capability of the industry itself.
Across India, the landscape of interior material specification is expanding at remarkable speed. Laminates are reproducing the depth and grain of real veneer, digital printing is creating highly specific stone, textile and graphic effects, PET is moving from smooth supermatt into micro-textures, and membrane and thermoformable surfaces are opening new possibilities in routed and curved shutters.
The same evolution is visible in hardware and furniture systems. Aluminium profiles are becoming slimmer and more decorative, wardrobe doors are combining glass with fabric, cane or metallic mesh, lighting is moving inside cabinetry, accessories are becoming automated, handles are becoming more tactile, and premium kitchen systems are increasingly engineered around movement, integration and performance.
The market, in other words, has never had more to offer.
Yet one of the most important findings emerging from the India Interior Trend Report 2026–27 is that the quality of products available to the market is advancing faster than the quality of specification that finally reaches many Indian homes.
The Observation
The organised surface industry is already highly sophisticated. IITR estimates laminate at around 53% of organised modular surface specification, followed by acrylic at 18%, membrane at 13%, aluminium and glass systems at 6%, PU at 4%, PET at 3% and veneer at 2%. More importantly, the report identifies texture, depth and tactility as some of the strongest premium signals now shaping product development.
This is visible in the products themselves. EGGER’s synchronised surfaces align embossing with the printed woodgrain so that the tactile pore follows what the eye sees. REHAU’s edgebanding ecosystem increasingly focuses on colour matching and near-invisible joint technologies. Similar developments are happening across PET, acrylic, membrane, aluminium, hardware, lighting and engineered stone.
What looks like a simple decorative shutter today may actually depend on a carefully coordinated system of surface, substrate, edge, adhesive, machining, hardware and installation.
This is where the specification gap begins.
A large part of India’s interior market still operates through site carpentry, contractors, hybrid execution models and relatively informal design practices. IITR notes that organised platforms and brands account for only around 10–15% of the total residential interiors market, while system-led execution becomes much stronger only when the denominator is narrowed to professionally designed projects. Within that professional segment, organised execution is estimated at 60–80% in Tier 1, 40–60% in Tier 2 and 20–40% in Tier 3.
This difference matters because the availability of advanced products does not automatically mean those products are being understood, engineered and executed correctly.
The Design Screen has Moved Faster Than the Site
Today, design inspiration is abundant. Pinterest, Instagram, international magazines, catalogues and trade exhibitions expose designers and homeowners to interiors that are technically sophisticated and visually refined. It is relatively easy to recreate the appearance of such references in a rendering or elevation. The difficulty begins when the image needs to become a physical product.
A designer may specify a dark supermatt shutter with an integrated profile and hidden lighting, but the final execution depends on a series of technical decisions that are rarely visible in the render. The correct substrate needs to be selected, the edge has to match, the adhesive system needs to suit the application, the hardware has to be compatible with the panel, and lighting channels must be planned before production.
The same applies to a full-height aluminium wardrobe, a seamless membrane shutter, a leather-wrapped door or a sensor-operated drawer. These ideas can look simple on screen, but their success depends on manufacturing logic, tolerances, machining and installation.
For many practitioners, AutoCAD still represents the principal technical tool. It is excellent for drawing, but a modern modular furniture workflow increasingly needs to go beyond drawings into quotations, BOQs, BOMs, production information, cutting lists, machining data and eventually machine files.
That transition from drawing to engineering is where much of the current capability gap sits.
New Products Demand Better Interior Material Specification
Consider something as small as an edge. As decorative surfaces become more realistic and refined, the edge becomes more visible as a quality marker. A beautiful wood-look panel can immediately lose its premium character if the edge is dark, mismatched or visibly glued. Modern edge-banding technologies can solve much of this, but only when the designer, manufacturer and installer understand how the surface and edge system work together.
The same is true of adhesives. PUR glue can offer stronger resistance in certain applications than conventional EVA systems, particularly where moisture and temperature are concerns, but the benefit only exists if the processing conditions, machinery and application method are correct.
Hardware presents another example. A contemporary concealed fitting, tandem drawer or integrated sliding system cannot simply be added at the end of the project. It has to influence panel dimensions, drilling patterns, load calculations and machining from the beginning.
Lighting is moving in exactly the same direction. IITR identifies sensor-activated LEDs integrated into wardrobe backs, shelf edges, profiles and plinths as a growing premium specification. The report also points out that integrated lighting needs to enter the BOM before production because it cannot be cleanly improvised once the furniture is finished.
This is why modern interiors increasingly need to be understood as systems rather than collections of products.
Execution Remains the Final Test
The capability gap becomes even more visible at installation. IITR estimates that India has around 40–50 lakh workers in interior-related installation trades, with approximately 85% operating informally. The report also cites NSDC research indicating that more than 70% of furniture and furnishings workers lack formal training.
These numbers help explain why a well-designed and well-manufactured product can still fail at the last stage. Precision furniture demands accurate alignment, correct drilling, hardware calibration, careful edge handling and an understanding of how factory tolerances translate onto an imperfect site.
The installer is therefore not simply executing the designer’s idea. The installer is completing an engineered system.
When that skill is missing, the result can be familiar: misaligned shutters, visible gaps, poor edge finishing, badly integrated lighting, hardware that does not move correctly, or a material that performs differently from what the designer expected.
This is often interpreted by the homeowner as a product-quality problem. In reality, it may be a specification or execution problem.
The Consumer is Caught in the Middle
Homeowners usually have the least technical information in this process. They can compare colours, images, brands and prices, but rarely know how to compare adhesive systems, edge quality, hardware load ratings, substrate suitability, machining precision or long-term serviceability. As a result, they often evaluate a complex interior system through the simplest visible variables: appearance and price.
That makes mastery over interior material specification even more important on the professional side. The designer, dealer, contractor or showroom consultant becomes the person translating technology into an understandable recommendation. If that translation is weak, the client cannot make an informed decision.
IITR identifies this distributed decision-making structure as one of the key reasons compatibility gaps occur in Indian interiors. Surface selection may sit with the designer, core-material decisions with the dealer or OEM, hardware with the showroom consultant and installation with another team entirely. When these decisions are made independently, the final product may contain individually good components that do not work well together.
Why It Matters
Material innovation is moving faster than specification capability. New surfaces and systems are entering the market continuously, but their value depends on whether the full application is understood.
Execution quality is now part of product quality. Premium surfaces, hardware and lighting increasingly require factory precision and trained installation to deliver the experience they promise.
Design software needs to connect with manufacturing. The next stage of professional practice is moving from drawing and rendering toward BOM, BOQ, machining and production intelligence.
Dealers and manufacturers are becoming knowledge partners. As products become more technical, the ability to explain compatibility and application becomes as important as product availability.
Consumer awareness will follow professional awareness. Better-informed professionals create better-informed homeowners, which ultimately improves both specification and willingness to pay.
Business Truth: The next competitive advantage in Indian interiors will come from knowing how to specify, not simply knowing what is available.
The Business Implication
For material brands, this means the future cannot be built through catalogues and sample folders alone. A new-age surface should ideally arrive with matching edges, recommended substrates, processing guidelines, adhesive advice, machining information and application details that make correct specification easier.
Hardware companies have a similar opportunity. Rather than selling hinges, drawers, lights or profiles as independent products, they can help designers understand complete furniture applications and the manufacturing logic behind them.
For dealers, the opportunity is to move from product selling toward interior material specification advisory. For OEMs and platforms, it is to build digital workflows that connect design, costing, manufacturing and installation. For institutions and training organisations, it is to bring material technology, hardware, DFM, BOM and site execution closer to the way interior design is taught.
[Explore more IITR INSIGHTS:Browse our growing collection of research-backed articles interpreting key findings from the ‘India Interior Trend Report‘.]
And for designers, the shift is equally significant. The profession is becoming more technically demanding, but also more powerful. A designer who understands how surfaces, edges, cores, hardware, lighting and manufacturing work together can convert far more ambitious ideas into reliable physical outcomes.
India already has access to extraordinary material and hardware innovation. The next stage of progress will depend on how successfully that innovation travels from the showroom and exhibition floor into the drawing, from the drawing into the factory, and from the factory into the home.
That is the specification gap the industry now needs to close.
The Water Management & Plumbing Skill Council (WMPSC) has put the spotlight on water and plumbing skilling, with industry-aligned training, apprenticeships and formal recognition of existing workers as it looks to strengthen the skills pipeline for India’s water and plumbing sector.
These priorities came into focus at the WMPSC Industry Conclave – “Roadmap of Skilling Towards Viksit Bharat”, held in Kolkata on 21 August 2026. The conclave brought together industry representatives, policymakers, academia and skilling stakeholders to discuss changing workforce requirements and the capabilities the sector will need in the coming years.
A key development at the conclave was the unveiling of the WMPSC Impact Assessment Report, bringing greater emphasis on measuring the outcomes of skilling initiatives. The report was unveiled by Jagannath Chattopadhyay, Minister in the Government of West Bengal, along with members of the WMPSC Board.
In his address, Chattopadhyay highlighted the potential of India’s young workforce and the need to channel it through appropriate skills and opportunities. He also spoke about cohort-based skilling, strengthening the skilling ecosystem in West Bengal and creating a stronger framework for workforce development nationally.
The discussions reflected a wider effort to align water and plumbing skilling more closely with industry requirements and employment opportunities under the National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS).
Industry Discusses Future of Water and Plumbing Skilling
A panel discussion titled “Skilling Together for Global Future” brought perspectives from industry, academia, water quality, infrastructure and the skilling ecosystem into the conversation.
The discussion centred on how skill requirements are changing across the water and plumbing sector and the need to prepare workers for emerging industry requirements. Collaboration between industry and training institutions, continuous learning and workforce readiness were among the areas highlighted.
The conversation is particularly relevant as the plumbing trade becomes increasingly connected with wider issues of water efficiency, sustainability, building performance and infrastructure development. This places greater emphasis not only on increasing the number of trained workers but also on keeping occupational skills aligned with changing practices and technologies.
RPL Brings Existing Workers into Formal Skills Framework
The conclave also recognised plumbers who had received Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) certificates, formally acknowledging skills and experience acquired through work rather than conventional vocational training.
RPL has particular relevance for trades such as plumbing, where a substantial part of the workforce has traditionally acquired skills through apprenticeships, contractors and on-the-job experience. Assessment and certification can provide such workers with formal recognition of capabilities they already possess while creating a pathway towards further training and skill progression.
Taken together, the emphasis on RPL, apprenticeships, industry-linked training and impact assessment points to a broader challenge facing the sector: workforce development cannot depend on fresh training alone. It also requires existing skills to be recognised, workers to have opportunities to upgrade their capabilities, and training programmes to remain connected with what employers and the market require.
The industry conclave was followed by the WMPSC Governing Council Meeting on 22 August 2026, where council members and industry leaders reviewed ongoing initiatives and discussed the Council’s future roadmap.
The meeting focused on strengthening strategies around vocational excellence, water efficiency and sustainable workforce development across India.
Coming immediately after the industry conclave, the Governing Council meeting provided an opportunity for WMPSC to carry forward the wider discussion on changing skill requirements, workforce readiness and industry engagement into its own programme priorities.
Together, the two days reflected WMPSC’s effort to bring industry requirements, water and plumbing skilling programmes and workforce development closer together as the sector prepares for changing capability needs.
Why did TPlusA acquire FineMakke (formerly Finemake)? The answer lies not in size, but in a business model that could help modular furniture entrepreneurs scale while strengthening TPlusA’s long-term strategy.
The TPlusA FineMakke acquisition wasn’t simply about acquiring a modular furniture company. It was bringing in a business that had spent nearly a decade developing the systems and capabilities that help modular furniture businesses scale.
“The first motivation for me was to be an entrepreneur. When we looked at the modular furniture industry in 2015, we felt there was enough opportunity to contribute and build something meaningful,” recalls Samba Chava, Co-founder, FineMakke.
Founded in 2015 by Chava and Rajasekhar Nallu, FineMakke began as a business-to-consumer (B2C) modular furniture company designing and delivering modular kitchens and wardrobes directly to homeowners. Having worked with Hettich and Samsung respectively, the founders recognised an opportunity at a time when organised players in the sector were still few. Backed by their own capital, they set out to build the business from the ground up.
Operating from a modest 150–200 sq ft office, FineMakke adopted an asset-light model. Instead of investing in its own factory, it focused on design, customer acquisition and project execution while outsourcing manufacturing to partner facilities. This kept capital requirements low and allowed the founders to concentrate on building the business and understanding the market.
To meet customers and showcase its offerings, the founders initially operated out of an industry partner’s experience centre before eventually establishing one of their own. But as the business grew, so did their understanding of the industry. They realised the bigger opportunity lay not in building another modular furniture brand, but in creating the systems that would help architects, dealers and entrepreneurs build successful modular furniture businesses.
That realisation transformed FineMakke from a consumer-facing furniture company into a business that enabled others to design, manufacture and deliver modular furniture more efficiently. Years later, those capabilities would justify the TPlusA FineMakke acquisition.
Building the Infrastructure Entrepreneurs Needed
After nearly five years as a consumer-facing modular furniture company, FineMakke had gained first-hand insight into how the industry worked. While executing projects, the founders repeatedly encountered the same bottlenecks—shortages of skilled designers, costly drawing errors and limited access to factories equipped with advanced machinery. Over time, they realised these were not unique to FineMakke but reflected wider gaps across the industry. “Throughout this journey, we kept analysing them and realised that the ecosystem that existed at that point wasn’t supporting entrepreneurs to have a successful business journey,” recalls Chava.
The Covid-19 pandemic gave the founders the opportunity to step back and fundamentally rethink the business. “During the pandemic, we had an opportunity to go back to the drawing table and think deeply about what we were doing. How else can we contribute to this industry? That’s where all our observations and learnings as a B2C company came into play,” he says.
Instead of returning to business as usual, the founders decided to solve the industry’s problems rather than their own. Their ambition shifted from building a modular furniture brand to creating systems that would help others build successful modular furniture businesses. “We chose to build the infrastructure for India’s modular furniture industry. When I say infrastructure, it’s not just the factory,” says Chava.
FineMakke’s new model no longer focused on serving homeowners directly. Instead, it began working exclusively with architects, dealers and furniture businesses, building the manufacturing, technology and supply-chain support they needed to execute projects more efficiently. “We don’t serve end customers. We only empower and enable dealers and architects to service the customer well,” says Chava.
Building a B2B Platform
The pivot to a B2B model required FineMakke to build capabilities that most modular furniture businesses lacked—from digital workflows and manufacturing support to procurement and project execution.
One of the industry’s biggest bottlenecks lies between design approval and manufacturing. Converting a customer’s approved design into production drawings and shop-floor documentation traditionally required significant manual effort and specialist expertise.
To simplify this process, FineMakke adopted a Design-to-Manufacturing (D2M) workflow that digitally connects design with production, reducing errors, improving visibility and shortening turnaround times.
“In the last one year, it has really helped this industry a lot. We are able to generate the same output with about 20–25% of the earlier manpower,” says Chava, adding that artificial intelligence is also simplifying design rendering and the preparation of production and shop-floor drawings.
The growing role of digital workflows and factory automation in furniture manufacturing was explored in our recent feature, Making Automation Work.
FineMakke’s proposition extended well beyond technology. It also sought to lower the barriers for dealers selling plywood, hardware and other building materials to enter the modular furniture business without investing in their own manufacturing facilities.
The company supplies ready-to-assemble modular components—including carcasses, shutters, drawer fronts and other cabinetry elements—while also providing design support, manufacturing, procurement and order fulfilment. This enables channel partners to offer
complete modular kitchen and wardrobe solutions, enabling them to move beyond selling individual products.
“We are creating an opportunity for them to sell a value-added product rather than a commodity product,” says Chava. According to him, the model has helped establish more than 50 dealer showrooms over the past four years. Many channel partners have expanded from selling plywood and hardware to operating dedicated modular furniture businesses, with second-generation entrepreneurs increasingly adopting the model.
To further reduce the investment required to build a modular furniture business, FineMakke established 7,500 sq ft experience centres in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Rather than serving only as company showrooms, these facilities function as shared sales infrastructure where architects and dealers can bring customers, showcase complete modular furniture solutions, conduct meetings and finalise projects without investing in their own display spaces.
“They are most welcome to come along with their customers to the showroom. We have about a 7,500 sq ft showroom in Bengaluru and another one in Hyderabad. They can showcase the entire product line, conduct their meetings from here and do the business. This is where we brought in that ease of doing business,” says Chava.
FineMakke has also standardised modular furniture components by maintaining ready inventory of carcasses in multiple sizes. Instead of manufacturing every project from scratch, dealers can procure standard modules off the shelf, reducing lead times and making execution faster and more predictable.
The company now plans to expand its experience-centre network beyond Bengaluru and Hyderabad while exploring a franchise-led B2B model, with Kolkata among the first markets under consideration. A new experience centre is also planned in Mumbai—extending a business model that aims to make modular furniture entrepreneurship easier to replicate across India.
Capital for Growth
Building manufacturing capabilities, integrating technology with production, strengthening procurement and establishing experience centres required far greater investment than the founders could deploy on their own.
To support this transition, the company raised growth capital in 2022 from Madhumala Investments. The funding helped FineMakke accelerate the development of its business model and invest in the capabilities needed to scale it.
Instead of pursuing rapid expansion, the company focused on refining its operating model—investing in technology, strengthening manufacturing and building a proposition that enabled channel partners to offer complete modular furniture solutions with lower investment and faster execution.
By the time TPlusA began evaluating FineMakke, the latter had evolved into far more than a modular furniture company. It had built capabilities across manufacturing, procurement, technology and dealer enablement—areas that complemented TPlusA’s vision of creating an integrated platform for the furniture industry—making the two companies a natural strategic fit.
The TPlusA FineMakke acquisition was driven by two clear objectives: helping its business partners become more profitable and delivering greater value to end customers. FineMakke’s standardised modular components enabled dealers to expand beyond selling traditional building materials, while allowing carpenters to procure ready-made carcasses that reduced installation time, improved margins and lowered costs for customers.
For Chava, the transaction was never about an exit. “I call it an acqui-hire,” he says, explaining that the objective was to combine complementary capabilities while preserving the entrepreneurial spirit that had built FineMakke over the previous decade.
Unlike a conventional acquisition where the founders step away, both Chava and his co-founder Rajasekhar Nallu continue to lead the business, bringing their technology, manufacturing and operational expertise into the combined organisation.
The partnership also formalised a relationship that had existed for years. Chava acknowledges that TPlusA founder A K Goel had mentored the founders from the company’s early days, helping shape its strategic direction as the business evolved. The integration, therefore, was the culmination of a long professional association rather than the beginning of a new one.
For Chava, the TPlusA FineMakke acquisition marks the beginning of a new chapter rather than the end of one. The founders continue to lead the business, while the model they spent nearly a decade building now has the opportunity to reach a much wider market through TPlusA’s distribution network and industry relationships.
Automation in furniture manufacturing is becoming an important part of the industry’s growth, but for many Indian manufacturers, the question is no longer simply whether to automate. It is where to start, what to automate, and whether the business is ready to make the investment work.
During a panel discussion at the India Kitchen Congress 2026, Venkataramana Gorti, Managing Director, Stanley Lifestyle; Gopi T, Managing Director, Woodtech Consultants; Kunal Roy, Director – India Sub Continent, SCM India Machinery Trade and Service Pvt Ltd; and Karan Raj Gopal, Founder & Director of Production, Fabience Living, along with anchor Raghavendra NK, CEO, IMA Schelling, discussed where Indian furniture manufacturing stands today, how manufacturers should assess the ROI of automation, and what needs to be in place before investing in machines and technology.
Where Does Indian Furniture Stand on Automation?
RAGHAVENDRA: From your experience across industries, where does the Indian furniture industry stand today in terms of automation maturity?
Venkat: Automotive is the leader in automation, with robotics already accounting for around 35–40% of operations. Electronics is a close second because of its repetitive manufacturing processes.
If you come to the Indian furniture industry, I think automation is currently at a low-to-mid level, and that too is largely limited to the large players. We have thousands of MSMEs, job-work organisations and a high level of customisation, which are some of the reasons for this situation.
The industry has already started using beam saws, CNCs and finishing machines, but these are largely individual machines or islands of automation rather than fully automated production lines.
As the industry moves towards greater automation, it is unlikely to start directly with robotics. We’ll have to first get into process standardisation, the modular way of working and digitalisation before we get into robotics.
RAGHAVENDRA: Is the Indian furniture industry buying automation with a clear plan, or are manufacturers buying machinery first and then figuring out the rest?
Gopi: In the olden days, people used to buy machines left, right and centre and then think about automation, and later realise the limitations. But in the current context, people are much clearer about what they need in terms of automation.
I think the reason people are looking at automation in India today is largely because they want to reduce the manpower working in the factory, which is one of the biggest headaches for manufacturers.
Some handholding is, of course, required. Many people think automation in furniture manufacturing can do everything for them, which is not possible in our industry. In automobile manufacturing, the processes are clearly defined. But in furniture, every factory has its own customised processes, so the processes are not always clearly defined.
That is where handholding becomes very important.
From Machines to Integrated Systems
RAGHAVENDRA: As manufacturers become more serious about automation, what according to you, Kunal, is the bigger gap today — the lack of automation itself, or the lack of integration between machines and systems?
Kunal: I think the gap is on both sides. The major objectives of automation are to reduce manpower, improve repeatability and improve plant efficiency. But the challenge is the cost and the heavy capex. Most SMEs and MSMEs are still struggling to decide whether they should go for automation, while for bigger corporations, automation is typically not a challenge.
But the deeper gap is integration. You may have standalone islands of automation — a CNC machine for cutting, another for drilling, automated edge banders — but if the machines are not talking to or interacting with each other, you don’t have line balancing or the right output and efficiency from the factory.
If an SME is starting a factory, the software part is also very important, especially at the CAD-CAM level. When the design is done manually and then transferred manually to the machine, that is where a lot of errors happen. A simple implementation of CAD-CAM can drastically reduce these errors. That is the first level of automation — not the machine, but the software part.
Without software, the machines can’t do magic. Even if I don’t have the money to buy automated machines, I can at least start with basic machines and CAD-CAM to minimise manual errors. Then, of course, it goes to machines and subsequently to the integration of machines using software automation such as MES and MOM, which can interact with the ERP and ensure that efficiency is maintained across the various levels of the factory.
RAGHAVENDRA: Karan, you have implemented automation across your factory. When you started implementing these systems at Fabience, what was the biggest reality shock?
Karan: We have three to four different types of automation, including material handling, mechanical, digital and packing automation. Coming to mechanical automation, we have two key machines — a robotic pickup and return for edge banding and a seven-axis paint machine.
One of the biggest challenges was that we initially thought it was a good machine to have, so we would just buy it and start painting panels. But it took almost a year of my hands-on experience to get it right.
There are a lot of iterations required to get a system right, particularly when you are dealing with a highly complex automated paint line. I feel we are in an industry where companies are not manager-driven but owner-driven. Our involvement had to be there right from the beginning to the end.
Coming to digital automation, we have automated the digital aspects right from the start to the end. In India, where people are used to writing things on paper and using Google Excel and similar tools, it was quite a challenge for them to get used to the ERP software we implemented.
We also had to check at every stage whether it was being used consistently, whether the software had any bugs and whether there were any issues. If there is a small problem and we don’t follow up with the staff, five or six months later we may have to go back right from day one to find out what went wrong.
The involvement has to be there, and that was one of the biggest challenges I encountered.
What Does Automation Really Deliver?
RAGHAVENDRA: In the premium furniture business, where does automation in furniture manufacturing really deliver ROI — cost, quality or delivery?
Venkat: I would say you get an advantage in quality, delivery and cost. When anyone purchases premium furniture, functionality is a given. They are not looking only for functionality. They are looking for the premium feel, precision and consistency. That is what you can achieve when you use the right automated machinery.
For example, if you use a CNC, you can have very tight tolerances and repeatability. If you use the right finishing machines, you get the finish you need consistently.
Another very important factor is that automation starts reducing rework, which itself is an ROI. But most importantly, if you have one defect in a premium product, your brand is lost. It is not just about the quality it delivers; it also helps you grow revenue and generate repeat business.
The other big advantage is delivery. It is very important that your turnaround time is shorter, and automated solutions help reduce the time. If you have digitised your processes, the information flow is faster and your ability to stay connected with customers in real time is better. That gives you better customer satisfaction, which is very important for any customer and even more so for a premium brand.
Automation also helps in the scalability of the business, which a manual operation will never give.
RAGHAVENDRA: Automation can improve quality, delivery and productivity, but the investment involved can be significant. When manufacturers invest in automation, what are the biggest financial mistakes they make?
Gopi: The biggest financial mistake is looking at the direct ROI from automation. Every automation has a cost and needs to have an ROI, but you cannot expect a direct ROI immediately.
Automation can give you consistent quality, which is very important. The second thing is reducing manpower, which is one of the norms of automation.
The third thing is turnaround time. In a shorter span of time, you can turn around more products, which has a large impact on the business. If you can deliver faster, finish a project faster and take up more projects, that contributes to the ROI.
According to me, direct ROI may not be visible in the immediate context, but in the longer run, automation definitely pays off.
RAGHAVENDRA: How should manufacturers actually calculate the ROI when investing in automation?
Kunal: I agree that capital investment cannot be directly linked with direct ROI. If you are doing automation in furniture manufacturing, you cannot simply take the increase in production as the ROI.
When you buy an automated machine, it is a heavy capex. But you are also reducing manpower, improving repeatability, bringing down rejection ratios and increasing the efficiency of the plant. You should look at the total cost of ownership of the machine and spread it across the life of the machine.
Typically, a good high-end industrial-range machine can last at least 10 to 15 years if it is maintained well. You have to look at the kind of value you can generate from the machine over that period. It cannot be looked at only as: I am investing this much, how much production can I increase, and can I get my money back in two or three years?
Buying the machine is one part, but maintaining the machine is another. You have to look at how many times the machine goes down in a year and whether, after three or five years of service, you are able to run it with minimum downtime.
We cannot isolate ROI as only the machine cost. It has to be looked at as the total cost of ownership.
RAGHAVENDRA: Karan, you have already invested in automation. Where has it delivered the biggest ROI for your business?
Karan: People usually talk about marketing and sales because that directly reflects the revenue of a company. But honestly, to actually drive the turnover of a company, especially a manufacturing unit, the operations have to be on point and the systems have to be in place.
In India, there is a lot of customisation in kitchens and wardrobes. If you look at Italian or German manufacturers, there is not as much customisation. They have fixed laminates, fixed edge bands, fixed module sizes and so on. So large factories can produce 500 kitchens a day. Here, there is a lot more procurement involved because of the customisation.
That brings me to the whole digital automation that we have implemented. We have set up systems where, right from design to installation, everything is automated through our ERP software. For example, when the procurement process happens, the system tells us what materials have arrived and what is yet to arrive. That makes the purchase process much easier and, in turn, increases efficiency.
We also have a panel tracking system. At any given time, we can have around 100 to 120 projects in our factory, with each project having around 300 to 400 panels. We can track the progress of each project and communicate with our clients to make sure the projects are dispatched on time. Delivery is very important.
I can also track how much time each of our designers has spent on a particular project and how much time each project spends on every machine, such as a beam saw. This gives us a clear idea of where we can improve as a system and helps reduce leakage, which is also very important. All of these things contribute to increasing revenue and cutting costs.
On the mechanical automation side, we have a robotic edge-band return and pickup system. In some good months, we can do around 40 kilometres of edge banding in a month on some major projects, particularly where the projects are standardised, such as 100 or 120 apartments.
We also have a seven-axis robotic spray system that can cover around 1,500 sq ft per day. While I still need manpower to run the machines, there has been a visible reduction. These are some of the notable areas where I am able to extract ROI, both directly and indirectly.
Is Your Business Ready for Automation?
RAGHAVENDRA: What should a company, according to you, Venkat, fix first before moving towards automation — the product, the process or the mindset?
Venkat: I think without doubt, mindset comes first, then the process, then the product, and finally automation.
Many times, companies think, we have the money, we have a problem, let’s automate. I would actually say that automation will not fix the problems. You need to fix your problems so that the automation works.
Why does mindset come first? At the leadership and team level, unless you have standardisation, proper measurements and discipline, it is not going to work.
From the leadership side, the first thing is that you need to be ready to document your processes and have SOPs in place, with the discipline to adhere to them. The second is that decisions have to be taken based on data, not intuition and so-called experience. Otherwise, automation won’t work.
In terms of process, if a manual process cannot be repeated, how do you automate it? Automation will essentially lock a process so that you can repeat and reproduce it. It is very important that the process is in place.
The third one, especially for our industry, is product design. Design will enable and dictate how much you can automate a process. Are you working on reducing the SKUs? Are you looking at having fewer material palettes? Are you working towards standard dimensions? There is something in Six Sigma called DFM, or design for manufacturing, and that is very important. Are your designs modular? These are all paramount.
It is not that you do anything upstream and automation will take care of everything. Once you have fixed these three, that is when you should start looking at automation. Otherwise, you have a frustrated leadership team, frustrated teams down the line and no ROI.
We need to follow this chronology to be successful. Do not automate to fix problems. Fix your problems so that automation works.
RAGHAVENDRA: Gopi, what are the clear signs that a factory is ready for automation?
Gopi: People might have the money to invest, but are they capable of running automation? That is the most important factor in deciding whether to go for automation.
Capability means having the right people to run the automation. Many people come to me for automation, but when I look at their background, I look at whether they have a capable team to run the automation and whether they have capable software, which is also very important. This capability is very important before deciding on any automation.
RAGHAVENDRA: Kunal, if somebody is building a new factory today, where should they start from day one?
Kunal: If you are starting small, say as an SME, you can pick up some manual machines to start with. But the important part is to start integrating at the design level, at least with the software, so that you can reduce errors. Then you can gradually start upgrading the machines and moving towards automation.
I think one of the easiest processes to automate is edge banding. If you look at panel processing, you get paid on the quality of edge banding and the quality of surface finish. So, if you want to make money, the quality of edge banding is very important.
If I have less money, on the machine front I would first automate the edge bander, then move to the cutting section and then the other processes.
It all depends on the vision of the entrepreneur. Based on that, he has to take a call. But the starting point should be CAD-CAM — the least investment, but a very productive one.
RAGHAVENDRA: You have already built and are running a highly automated factory, Karan. Having learned from the experience, if you had to rebuild it today, what is the first thing you would do differently?
Karan: We started in 2019 in a much smaller unit, and in 2023 we moved to a much larger manufacturing unit. We never wanted to automate 100% of everything in the current manufacturing unit outright. So, we went step by step.
For instance, we have about 70% automation, if you want to measure it quantitatively, and then slowly we started piecing everything together. Recently, for example, we got an automated packing machine, and the next move will probably follow.
It really depends on whether you are ready for the market and what products you are actually manufacturing, which ones you want to make in-house and which ones you want to outsource.
To answer your question very honestly, I feel like I would do the same thing again and again — slowly, step by step, and piece everything together. There is a long way to go.
Customisation With Automation in Furniture Manufacturing
RAGHAVENDRA: Can automation help manufacturers manage customisation while still maintaining efficiency and repeatability in the factory?
Gopi: There is often confusion between customisation and choice. In the kitchen industry, customisation is a norm because every house is different. Cabinets and shutters have to be customised. But when you give customers a choice of different colours or finishes, that is a choice, not customisation.
We recently worked on an automation project where the client wanted to offer 72 colours to customers. The cabinetry sizes were customised, but the customer could choose from 72 colours. In a pan-India business, this kind of choice is important because preferences can vary across regions. Of the 72 colours, perhaps 24–25 could be fast-moving, but the entire range can still be managed through automation.
When an order comes in, the automation can automatically pick the colour selected for that particular project, run it and finish it. So customisation with different choices is possible using automation.
RAGHAVENDRA: I call this mass customisation, mass batch size one. Furniture manufacturing is also logistics. When we are talking about automation, we should not be creative inside the factory. We have to be more creative at the sales front and in other areas, but inside the factory we have to be boring because it has to be about repeatability and doing the same thing consistently.
Venkat: While there can be choices at the front end, the trick is how we are able to standardise manufacturing at the back end.
If you look at the auto or electronics industries, customers are given choices at the front end, but the manufacturing process behind those choices is standardised. It is like ice cream — the base is still vanilla, and then you have different things coming on it. That is the approach we need to look at in furniture manufacturing as well.
