In our pursuit to assist the youth to make the Right Academic/Career Choices, we have interviewed several successful individuals from various professions.
The second in the series is Mr. Pratap Jadhav, Interior Designer, National President, Institute of Indian Interior Designers.
For Pratap, the fun and thrill he gets out of design and creativity, his communication skills, fair practices, compassion and dedication have been the contributory success factors.
Read on to find what he has to share about his Illustrious Career…
CB5: Mr. Jadhav… As an Interior Designer, you are in a very interesting and creative profession which actually impacts everyone… Can you please share with us some detail about your profession? What do Interior Design specialists like you do?
Pratap Jadhav: I am an interior designer by profession and we have been now working for last 27 years in Interior design consultancy. We have largely been doing residential, high-end residential, corporate offices and commercial projects. It has been a wide spectrum, but we have a very selective clientele. Because of our approach of not overdoing and keeping it simple. We try and limit the number of projects we do at a time, because we aim for the best for our client and every project that we do.
Parallel to this, I am also heading the professional body as the National President of Institute of Indian Interior Designers (IIID) in India. So a lot of effort and contribution has been done from our end for the profession of Interior design in India.
CB5: How did you decide on the field of Interior Design for your formal education? What made you study Interior Design??
Pratap Jadhav: We have it in the family, my father was an architect, so we obviously had some creativity in our blood. But the reason I did not opt for architecture was that I wanted to run away from five years of education , I was always fascinated by the interior spaces. One actually deals with client psychology on day to day basis, understand each and every person in their family, or people working in the offices and understand human behavior, human psychology, culture. Interiors felt so intriguing at that time, rather than doing architecture because it would go on for years and interior projects would get faster outcomes. I was being a little rebellious then. I was actually planning to go for advertising but then destiny was to make me an interior designer.
CB5: Very Interesting! And Where did you study ID? What were/are your motivators? Who are your icons?
Pratap Jadhav: I studied in Marathwada Mitra Mandal, it was the first batch of the School of Interior Design, blessed with a wonderful faculty like Hemant Khire and R.M Kulkarni. They are still my gurus, and they groomed us so well that we don’t call ourselves as accomplished designers even now, as every day we learn something, we understand something new. This field is still very new and young so to say, it’s still growing and you have to keep your eyes, ears, all senses open to be able to absorb and understand this.
My father, was a big ideal for me, highly creative person, the projects that he has done I feel are still contemporary. His work, his principles on which he laid his foundation, his practice throughout his life, the respect that he garnered from the family, from the clients, from the entire fraternity, from the public at large was something which has made my being into this field little easier, as the ideal was at home itself. I could see his success and I could see the satisfaction on his face, he was never bogged by anything else and he was always a focussed individual throughout his life. He was also a leader, he headed Nasik’s IIA center, so even some of the leadership qualities in me are inherent. He was “THE” reason I got into all this. I try and follow his principles, an absolutely non-corrupt man, fair and very sincere to his work – I think I learned that from him. So my father was my biggest motivator. Apart from him, in practice, I adore the work of Charles Correa, Ramesh Edwankar along with Chandrashekhar Kanetkar. I tried to learn a lot from them. These have been an inspiration and because of whom the whole design process or the design ability or the design understanding grew.
CB5: Wow…when you have such a set of mentors how can you escape success? And what do you enjoy most about your work as an Interior Designer?
Pratap Jadhav: Nobody can copy you, nobody can replicate what you have done. It’s not possible, even if I open the book and I try to replicate something, it’s not going to work, so that’s the thrill. The first day of my college we were told to draw a line and one single line also cannot be repeated even by ourselves. So that uniqueness and fun that one gets out of that creativity was something which excites me.
CB5: In your opinion what has made you successful? What are your success factors? AND What elements about your personality help in this success?
Pratap Jadhav: I can come across people, I can speak well, I have been very sincere, fair like my father, my principles have been laid and I can’t compromise them. Being able to communicate effectively is one of my biggest assets and again thanks to my father who made me participate in debates and competitions, elocution competitions from my childhood. So that gave me a stage here and got opportunities. My ability to be able to do public speaking has given me a lot of openings and opportunities in life and plus the principles I have, the philosophy that I follow and something which supports all this to make me a better leader.
CB5: What are the significant achievements in your present career that you would like our readers to know?
Pratap Jadhav: A happy family, secondly we have done really good work which I enjoy myself, I don’t know how much of it is appreciated but otherwise we have niche clients, we don’t do lot of projects at a time, our work has been published, as a leader I have been appreciated for my work throughout India and across Asia Pacific. Additionally, on 7th July I will be awarded as a Prime Leader by CNBC TV and Chamber of Commerce of Dubai. So these are highs in life, but I believe the highs or satisfaction that I get through every project that I complete, that’s where I feel we have achieved, because we put in a lot of effort and energy in getting a project done. Though I feel because of my IIID, some part of it has been left out, research could have happened more, we could have done better sites than what we are doing, but still, at the end of the day, we get the results. So we are enjoying the process, that’s where the gain is that’s where the appreciation that has come from across India, across Asia Pacific board of designers. It gives us a good feeling that we work, we are approached, we are appreciated. The work is happening, the sites are coming up well, we are evolving every day we are doing better work every day.
CB5: What were some of the sacrifices you had to make to reach the level of success that you have achieved?
Pratap Jadhav: Huge – the only sacrifice I feel is my time to my family which is largely reduced because of my commitment to IIID. I have traveled extensively in the last 2.5 years, hardly get time to be with my family, and my daughters, but nevertheless, I feel that there is some gain. They will look at me as an ideal and follow it in their lives. But still, I feel at times I could have given more time to them.
Even in office a lot of my absence is been felt. I haven’t been giving a lot of time, but because of the wonderful staff that I have and the quality of delegating things to people which helped me in IIID leadership is also helping me here. I just do the work of my core competence that is design. I don’t do anything else, my staff is the one working day in and day out. My man Friday Ankush Ghare is my life line at work along with my design staff.
CB5: So focussed hard work appears to be an important mantra! Would you have any advice for the younger generation, especially someone who is at crossroads trying to select an education path, say someone between ages 14-21 years?
Pratap Jadhav: Work hard, gain as much knowledge as you can and then be proactive. Keep doing work, don’t look at the time. It pays ultimately. Be fair in your practices. I see a lot of younger generation getting into wrong practices or trying to establish their practices in wrong ways. I strongly believe if you work hard, if you are fair throughout your practice, it might take a decade or a half but at the end of the day what comes to you is the satisfaction and also recognition, money follows.
Read more. Reading is something which the younger generation is not doing right now. Huge amount of reading is required to have a holistic approach towards design. We have to understand humanities, culture, religion, to be able to be a good designer!
Become Self Aware. I have been blessed, there were some extremes in my personality which were pointedly identified in the CB5 and it has helped me gain confidence and leadership that was accepted at IIID and now I have been asked to repeat the tenure and it’s all because of that one thing that was pointed out and it has helped me a lot. It has given me a wonderful insight. I have recommended so many of my friends to do CB5 and benefit from the counseling, because I myself strongly believe that CB5 has given me the mirror that I could stand in front of and understand myself so well. I feel CB5 is a very scientific way of knowing yourself. So I must thank Ms.Chatura Damle and CB5 for the same.
CB5: Is there anything else that you would like to share with our readers?
Pratap Jadhav: I would rather talk of two things – Design and Leadership. We were always driven by trying to achieve timeless design solutions, so even though our office space is almost 10 years old, it looks like it has been done yesterday and 10 years down the line it will still look like it has been done yesterday. So this is what we try to achieve, trying to be minimalistic. I know this is a little difficult and heavy term for me to use at this age. Even though I am 52 right now, trying to be minimal, trying to eliminate things that are not essential in space and trying to make it better, user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing. I strongly believe that SPACES INFLUENCE YOU, YOUR LIFE so that is the reason we have come out with the mission of “Taking design to the masses” at IIID, for last few years. There is a notion that design is only for the elite, which is not so. Every individual in this country or in this world deserves a lifestyle and we have not let design reach those classes which are on edge. That is what we are driven towards now. We had a design yatra which was 26000 km’s, taking design to the masses, we had 12 episodes on NDTV Good times repeated thrice, we tried to reach to the masses to make them understand what design is. We conducted 450 programs across India and 45 projects have been undertaken by IIID. Because we do something as a design, it stands as an ideal, people do understand how design can influence their life and how it changes. The chaos that we see around in the society right now can largely be reduced if we have a nicely designed society. So that’s our mission, that’s where we head towards, that’s where I would like to work.
Education is another field that we have worked in. 31 colleges are affiliated with IIID. We are trying to enhance the quality of education in Interior design in India. We have formed the Council of Interior Design Education. We are trying to get licensing to practice Interior Design in India.
CB5: Thank You for the wonderful and detailed interview. We are sure that your experiences will help our young readers and parents gain from your experiences.
CB5: That was Mr. Pratap Jadhav, President of IIID giving us deep insights on his experiences in choosing and rising in the profession. Hope this gives our readers a new perspective about Interior Design…
Until our next Blog on another interesting profession…
Thank You
