Home sweet home, at the office

No cubicles and boring chairs in this office. Photo credit: Hector Beverages.

Even just a few years ago, offices were just a place people went to work at.

But today, those stiff-straight chairs, greyscale interiors, white LED lights fading out the daylight outside, or the windows that do nothing to bring in cool breeze are vastly outdated. After all, those settings have been known to drain the energy out of employees and make them run back home as soon as possible – the last thing a founder trying to change the world would want.

To tackle this, startup entrepreneurs are fuelling a trend in India where the workplace is as much a home as home itself.

If you manage to spot Paper Boat’s office in Bangalore, you would know. A lane shaded by trees brings you to a quiet and serene neighborhood in Whitefield. At the end of the road is a pastel peach bungalow with Victorian-style windows and doors.

The focus has changed from money-making to employee satisfaction.

Step inside and you see a set of people sitting by the poolside with their laptops, trees towering over them. Walk into another room and you will see some more people, again with their laptops, but this time chatting over a cup of tea, sitting on a wooden couch. The walls around have beautiful murals and paintings of Malgudi Days – a classic fictionalized account of life in an idyllic south Indian village. There’s Pac-Man graffiti in another room.

Meetings. Photo credit: Hector Beverages.

This is the “office/home” of Hector Beverages, which retails the popular juice brand Paper Boat.

“I always look for a balcony and big windows when I am looking for a house, and when we started looking for office space our requirements were the same. We didn’t want to work in a boxed environment. I needed peace and quiet, with squirrels going about me,” says Parvesh Debuka, head marketing, Hector Beverages. With an in-house cook who delivers on-demand for 33-odd employees, the Paper Boat office is such that one “feels like we are leaving home one to go to home two,” he added.

Good office design = happy employees

Reading corner, InMobi. Photo credit: InMobi.

Home one, home two

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