Most people assume brands begin with a neatly framed vision. A pitch deck. A grand strategy. A whiteboard full of arrows and diagrams. Mine began in the most unromantic way possible. A blank plot of land. No construction. No foundation. Not even a brick. Just an idea of a resort we wanted to build one day.
That imaginary resort forced me into designing something I didn’t know would change my life.
I didn’t set out to build a lighting brand. I didn’t wake up one morning thinking about table lamps or modular systems or battery life. The truth is simpler. I wanted to design everything in that resort. The chairs. The tables. The furniture. The wall panels. The small details. The big gestures. If a designer could design it, I wanted to design it.
And that’s where the trouble started.
Because when you want everything to feel like “you,” you start noticing what doesn’t.
Lighting was the first category that pushed back.
You walk into any nice restaurant in India today and you’ll see the same problem. Lamps that look decent from a distance but feel cheap the moment you touch them. Lights that die halfway through dinner. Batteries that fail. Buttons that don’t work. Plastic bodies pretending to be premium. No repairability. No service. And owners who don’t know what to do when the lamps stop responding.
I’ve seen this across Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore, Udaipur, Jaipur, Goa. Different cities. Same flaws.
This is where the seed of Muvèlo was planted.
Not in inspiration
Not in ambition
But in irritation.
When you repeatedly see something broken, you either tolerate it or fix it. I’m not good at tolerating.
The moment it clicked
There was no dramatic epiphany. No lightning bolt. Just a simple, annoying moment.
We were discussing how the resort dining area should feel. Warm. Intimate. Soft lighting. No harsh overhead glare. I knew table lamps would play a big role. But I hated every option available.
I couldn’t imagine placing those same cheap rechargeable lamps on my tables. And that made everything clear. If I couldn’t respect the objects in my own space, there was no way I could expect guests to.
That was the first spark.
Designing a lamp is easy. Designing a reason is not.
People think designing a lamp is complex. Honestly, it’s not. You open your CAD software, you explore forms, you sketch shapes, you extrude, revolve, cut, fillet. It's process-heavy, yes, but not intellectually hard.
The real difficulty comes earlier
Why does this lamp need to exist?
Most designers skip this question. They fall in love with the shape before they understand the purpose. But that approach produces pretty objects with empty hearts. And I’m not interested in designing empty things.
So I made a simple rule for myself
If I cannot explain the purpose clearly, I will not design it.
This rule alone shaped the rest of the journey.
The problem was bigger than I thought
Once I started analyzing what was wrong with lighting products in India, I found a cluster of issues:
- They were not designed by people who understand design.
- They were not made for Indian environments.
- They were not modular.
- They were not repairable.
- They were not comfortable to hold.
- They were not durable.
- They were not aesthetically refined.
- They had no identity.
Everything felt borrowed. Imported. Copied.
Nothing felt born here.
And as someone who loves ergonomics, tactile detail, and intentional proportions, this irritated me every single day.
The first prototypes
Most founders hide their first prototype stories because they’re messy. I won’t.
My first system, later called the “Bullet System” or the early Ekkam system, was way too compact. I wanted minimalism so badly that I overdid it. The electronics barely fit. The soldering was extremely difficult. The tolerances were unforgiving. And building even a single piece felt like surgery.
But here’s the funny part.
My wife loved it.
Not because it worked perfectly, but because she knew me when I was printing random models in college over a decade ago. Seeing me solder, assemble and bring light out of a design made her genuinely surprised.
I didn’t show her the first version. Or the second. Or the tenth. She saw maybe the twelfth or thirteenth one. The first version that actually lit up.
Her reaction mattered more than any potential customer’s.
Because she is the one person who can tell instantly whether I’m forcing something or if something is genuinely good.
She said, “You can actually make this.”
And that was enough validation.
Learning electronics as an architect
Here’s something I’ve never sugarcoated.
I’m not an electronics engineer.
I had to learn everything from scratch
- What components do
- How they connect
- Why things fail
- How circuitry behaves
- How to design PCBs
- How tolerances affect assembly
- How to integrate battery systems
- How to solder without damaging parts
- How to choose the right LED and diffuser
- How to avoid overheating
- How to print components that don’t warp, melt, or deform
This learning curve was not inspirational. It was painful.
But it was necessary.
And this is where most designers fail.
They design a “beautiful object.”
Then dump it on an engineer and force them to make it work.
I didn’t want that misery.
If I was designing a lamp, I wanted to understand every single part of its anatomy.
Why modularity became non-negotiable
People assume modularity is some aesthetic choice. It isn’t.
Modularity was a reaction to a simple observation
People get bored.
A lamp that looks great today may feel repetitive in six months. Or maybe your setup changes. Your mood changes. Your space evolves. Or you simply want something different for an event, a dinner, a celebration.
In India, event planners use the same reused props for years. Same candles. Same generic lamps. Same tired decor.
I wanted to give them something else
- A lamp that adapts
- A shade that transforms
- A body that can be swapped
- A color that can change
- A system that doesn’t need tools
- A design that moves as quickly as the moment demands
That’s how modularity became the core.
The real turning point
The moment I realized this wasn’t just a resort experiment but a full brand was when I saw how people reacted.
Every time someone held a prototype
they felt the weight
the curves
the textures
the ribs
the softness of the light
the warm tone
the tactile button
the battery life
the precision
the silence
the intention
People kept saying
“This feels like something premium.”
“This feels very personal.”
“This doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen.”
“This feels like an object, not a gadget.”
That’s when it struck me
I wasn’t building lamps.
I was building experiences.
Why personalisation matters
Muvèlo is not about selling shapes.
It’s about giving people control over the objects in their lives.
Your color.
Your shade.
Your form.
Your mood.
Your mix.
People hate being boxed into a single style.
Most brands offer three designs, two colors, and no flexibility.
I wanted to break that pattern.
Where we are now
Today, Muvèlo has grown far beyond one imaginary resort.
We have
- Multiple lighting systems
- Modular designs
- Touch sensor lamps
- Larger sculptural lamps
- Strong material research
- A growing color palette
- Swappable shades
- Repairable parts
- 24 plus hour battery life
- Premium tactile details
- A brand aesthetic that’s recognisable
But the core emotion is unchanged.
Muvèlo still exists for the same reasons it began
Because I refuse to accept bad design.
Because objects should adapt.
Because lighting should feel personal.
Because functionality matters as much as beauty.
Because every object deserves a reason to exist.
What the resort taught me
Most founders need a fancy corporate origin story.
Mine came from something simple.
A desire to design every detail of a place that didn’t even exist yet.
That imaginary resort forced me to question everything I saw.
It pushed me to rethink lighting.
It made me build instead of complain.
It made me learn instead of outsource.
It made me trust my instincts.
And it gave me a brand.
The resort might still be under planning
but Muvèlo is already real
and already moving.
And that’s the irony
The resort didn’t create the lamps.
The lamps created a new path entirely.