What does it feel like to live in a shipping container? When Neeraj Khandelwal ideated In the Box Space, a pan-India startup that constructs living/work/luxury spaces and restaurants out of used shipping containers six months ago, his foremost challenge was to deal with the mental block of their initial customers.
Neeraj Khandelwal, the founder
Neeraj’s work in Japan, UK in architecture/interior designing firms taught him well to play the waiting game and make the best use of the spaces he had. Although they did give customers a 3D-virtual prototype of what their space would look like, they couldn’t show their earlier works and invade other’s privacy.
The phase was still an interesting one, none knew what the market was and yet they could experiment with a few players they had. With a lot of people going back to basic-level styling — say the use of bricks, this concept got them interested. “The ones who were willing to gamble were individuals with farmhouses, who couldn’t afford the time/budget to construct independent houses and newbies (who own bars/restaurants) who were ready to think out of the box,” Neeraj states. Of course, real-time issues like pipelines, the drainage system are something that people need to consider for a long-term and Neeraj insists that theirs is a concept bound to work that way. It’s not practical to keep shifting containers from one place to another, say in a month’s time, he mentions.
A sample of their works
While they did their best to show their designing prowess, the customer is more than welcome to govern the overall look and feel of their space. He calls that a ‘plug and play’ option.
To their surprise, though people from the metropolis showed a liking to the idea, a lot of calls came from hill-stations such as Chandigarh, Coorg and areas around Visakhapatnam besides several smaller-towns across South-India. In The Box Space gives people enough space to be eco-friendly and yet not compromise on luxury.
“We’re trying to do our bit to tie up with governments to build spaces (houses and schools) in smaller towns for affordable prices, that’s our way of giving back,” Neeraj signs off.
