Architecturally Sound

Smriti Ahuja, co- founder - Spiro Spero, tells Bindu Gopal Rao how she manages a firm that is involved in creating, conceptualizing, and developing commercial spaces and brands

- Bindu Gopal Rao

A graduate of the Istituto Europeo Di Design in Milan, Smriti Ahuja is an event, content, and public relations professional apart from being involved with The Art Conspiracy Festival and the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival for The Art Loft. And if that packed a punch, she is also co-founder of Mumbai based Spiro Spero (pronounced speedo spare-ro), an architecture, design, and branding firm that she and her partner Keith Menon started in 2011.

“We’re both Mass Media students who majored in advertising. I then went on to do my Masters in Communication in Milan. A few years later, we were bootstrapped and working on travel and social projects when we got the chance to design a friend’s bar. The bar did really well and we got our next client, a big chain of bars across the country. Ever since there has been no looking back.”

Smriti attends to the business and execution end of things (which she credits her Sindhi roots for), and Keith is the designer. “While I am no artist myself, I do have a keen understanding and sense of aesthetics which I can combine with the business sense that I have grown up with to figure what is going to work and what is not,” she explains.