Ipsita Panda
Founder & Principal Designer, Houzeome
Twenty years of running a design firm — which means she can talk about design as a craft and about design as a business that has to pay salaries.
Ipsita founded Houzeome in 2006 and has run it since — an interior design consulting firm in Bengaluru doing turnkey interiors, custom furniture and accessories for homeowners.
The firm was named Most Outstanding Interior Design Firm for 2021–2022.
Before and alongside it, she has worked across the furniture and interiors industry: design partner at Livspace, design consultant at International Furniture Factory on corporate and hospitality projects, furniture designer at Kurlon Enterprise, and freelance product designer at Moksha-Yug Access.
She holds a diploma in accessory design from the National Institute of Fashion Technology, and has studied entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School Online.
Design students are taught the craft and left to work out the business by themselves — pricing, clients, scope, cash flow, and what to do when a project goes wrong. Ipsita has been doing both for twenty years, and talks about the half that does not get taught.
What they talk about
- Running a design firm: pricing, clients and cash flow
- What twenty years in interiors and furniture actually looks like
- Careers in design beyond the degree
- Starting a business and keeping it running for two decades