She is 23. He is 26. Together they are trying to make art scaleable

The Postbox founders Nikhil and Madhuvanti.

Nikhil Joseph has been hit by a storm when I first catch up with him – quite literally. “There’s no power, no water, no internet connectivity here,” he manages to say before the line gets disconnected. His office is in the center of Chennai, a city battered by Cyclone Vardha, but he has a startup to run. When we speak again, he and his team have shifted base to a café.

Nikhil, a 26-year-old mechanical engineer and former Facebook employee, powers niche ecommerce firm The Postbox, which he co-founded with NAFA design graduate Madhuvanti Senthilkumar, 23.

It began as a curated platform for artists. Today it works with 250 artisans across India to offer a tiny but precious range of art and lifestyle products, all designed by an in-house team, all examples of functional art.

We were the typical cockroach.

You’re likely to encounter their tote bags in simple, earthy combinations of leather and Ikat cloth while surfing Facebook.

They release no more than three or four products a month, yet The Postbox gets around 1,100 orders, with an average order value of US$30. That translates to monthly sales of US$32,440. “We hope to break even by March next year,” says Nikhil.

But just about a year ago, the going was tough.

How saleable is art?

An Ikat tote bag in the making. Photo credit: The Postbox.

After working for Facebook in Hyderabad and California, Nikhil found himself back in Chennai in 2014. “There was a massive amount of art and artists in the city, but there was no curated platform for their work. I met Madhu at an art conference, and we discussed the idea of such a space,” Nikhil tells Tech in Asia.

They launched The Postbox in September with six products, among them notebooks, postcards, posters, and cushion covers. Soon after, Madhu left for Milan to study brand management.

If there’s one singular trait that the founders have displayed throughout their journey, it is the eagerness to learn, experiment, and evolve. Thus Nikhil too decided to travel across India for three to four months.

“How saleable is art? What does a consumer want? How can I scale?” Those were the questions he wanted answers to.

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