The Person of the Year Award at the India Kitchen Congress honours individuals whose leadership has redefined India’s modular kitchen and interiors industry — combining innovation with integrity and entrepreneurship with purpose.
In 2025, the jury found an exceptional fit in Srikanth Iyer Person of the Year 2025, co-founder and CEO of HomeLane, whose clarity of vision, disciplined growth, and people-first governance have advanced both his company and the sector’s maturity. His selection, the jury said, “embodies how strategic foresight, resilience, and ethical leadership together create lasting value.”
Over a 32-year entrepreneurial journey, Iyer has shown that technology and trust can coexist — that growth, when anchored in principles, can outlast disruption. From co-founding Edurite Technologies in 2000, to leading Pearson India after its acquisitions, and then launching HomeLane in 2014, he has consistently reinvented businesses with purpose and precision.
With HomeLane, he has built a credible, tech-driven brand that survived turbulence, scaled with investor confidence, and is now preparing for a public listing. In FY 2024–25, the company grew revenues to ₹ 756 crore from ₹ 618, while cutting its EBITDA loss to ₹ 111.40 crore from ₹ 121.70 crore the previous year — evidence that frugality and focus deliver results.
“We wanted to make the home-interiors journey predictable, transparent, and stress-free.” — Srikanth Iyer Person of the Year 2025
When the Disruptor Was Disrupted
The pandemic of 2020 halted India’s interiors business overnight. For HomeLane — built on in-person consultations — it could have been a fatal blow. Yet Iyer’s earlier bet on virtual design became the company’s lifeline. The SpaceCraft platform, launched in 2017, enabled customers to co-design homes online. Within a month of the first lockdown, retrained designers were closing projects virtually, generating ₹ 20 crore in sales; during the second wave in 2021, that figure rose to ₹ 30 crore.
Principles, Not Protocols
Behind HomeLane’s technology and systems lies a deeply human code. As the organisation scaled to over 2,500 employees and 1,500 associates, Iyer realised that culture, too, needed codifying. The result was a framework of six enduring principles: trust and transparency, collaboration, customer-centricity, high standards, empathy, and frugality.
Trust and transparency form the foundation. “In our business, people literally let us into their homes and part with their savings,” he says. “Our job is to earn and keep that trust.” Transparency means honest pricing, realistic timelines, and visible accountability at every stage — qualities that build long-term brand equity.
Collaboration is equally critical. “The modular interiors business is like a relay race — unless you collaborate, you won’t finish well,” Iyer explains. Designers, site engineers, project managers, and vendors must pass the baton seamlessly to deliver predictability and delight.
Customer-centricity drives every system and decision. HomeLane’s model is designed to minimise customer stress — through online consultations, precise project tracking, and proactive service recovery. “A happy customer is the best marketing investment,” Iyer says.
High standards define internal expectations. Quality, punctuality, and professionalism are non-negotiable, and Iyer insists these apply across hierarchies. “Encourage your colleagues to do their best — excellence compounds when it becomes collective habit.”
Empathy, he emphasises, is the invisible glue that keeps relationships strong. “It’s easy to lose your cool with a vendor or partner. But empathy helps you solve problems faster and build loyalty that no contract can guarantee.”
And finally, frugality, which he calls the “secret sauce.” “We want to be a profitable business. Unless you run a business frugally, you’ll never be profitable — and that’s something to wear on your sleeve.”
A favourite example illustrates the mindset. HomeLane once offered two colours for wardrobe back panels; by combining them into one SKU with dual-sided colour, the company saved cost and simplified its supply chain. Small efficiencies like these, he says, create long-term strength.
These six principles together define HomeLane’s culture — a blend of rigour and resourcefulness that helped it become one of the first companies in its category to achieve EBITDA profitability in Q1 2025, setting the stage for its IPO.
Fund-Raising, Frugally
Iyer’s capital philosophy contrasts sharply with the startup world’s valuation frenzy. Having raised over $ 130 million across ventures, he remains cautious: “Not all businesses need venture capital. Raise only when it accelerates genuine growth, and delay it as long as possible — the earlier you raise, the more you dilute.”
His governance record brought investors such as Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India) and Aarin Capital back from his Edurite days to HomeLane. When the company acquired Design Café in 2024, Iyer convinced those same investors to reinvest — not to inflate scale but to neutralise a competitor and secure a complementary premium-segment brand. It was capital discipline serving strategy, not speculation.
“I treat investor money more carefully than my own,” he says. “It’s a responsibility, not a privilege.”
Technology Meets Emotion
At its heart, HomeLane is a technology company solving an emotional problem — helping homeowners express identity through design. Its AI-powered Look Book personalises design suggestions by analysing lifestyle and budget, and Iyer’s next frontier is self-design, where customers craft their own spaces. “Home design is emotional,” he says. “We want to give people the tools to design their own spaces. It’s about ownership and connection, not just convenience.”
Rising East, Strong South
HomeLane’s core market remains the South — Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai — but its breakout success now comes from the East. “Kolkata is our second-largest city,” says Iyer. “We entered early and built trust in a region underserved by national brands. Bhubaneswar, Ranchi, and Patna are also performing strongly.”
In the North and West, where consumers seek more premium design, Design Café has found traction in Mumbai and NCR. The dual-brand approach reflects Iyer’s belief that India’s modular interiors space is not winner-takes-all, but a portfolio opportunity requiring differentiation as much as scale.
Riding the Consolidation Curve
India’s modular-furniture industry is expanding at 11.7 per cent CAGR, against a global average of 5.1 per cent. Consumers are rapidly shifting from unorganised carpentry to branded experiences. “In the past four years, nearly 30 per cent of homebuyers have chosen premium interiors,” he notes. “They value design, predictability, and peace of mind.”
Citing global parallels, he adds: “In 2007, 85 per cent of China’s interiors market was unorganised; today, 85 per cent is organised. India will follow that curve within a decade.” His ambition is to build a house of brands serving diverse customer types — design-first, functional, or luxury — as the market formalises.
IPO Aim
With steady 25–30 per cent annual growth and 55,000 homes delivered across 40 cities, HomeLane is poised to go public within 12–15 months, once profitability holds across quarters. “Markets reward consistency, not one-time wins,” Iyer says. “We want sustainable, predictable growth before we list.”
Supply chains have also been diversified from China to Malaysia and Vietnam, with growing interest from foreign institutional investors — moves that reflect both financial and organisational maturity.
Clarity and Continuity
Summing up his journey, Iyer told Sourcing Hardware: “I’ve built four companies, but I’ve learned one thing — clarity outlasts chaos.”
At the India Kitchen Congress Awards 2025, as he accepted the Person of the Year honour, he reminded the audience: “Striving for all-round excellence leads to mediocrity. Decide what trade-offs you’ll make — where you’ll do things badly, even very badly, in the service of great.”
From Edurite’s digital classrooms to HomeLane’s tech-enabled living spaces, Srikanth Iyer’s leadership is proof that innovation succeeds only when grounded in values. Trust, empathy, and frugality — the constants in his playbook — are what make Srikanth Iyer Person of the Year 2025 a fitting choice for India’s evolving modular interiors industry.
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