(Above): A view of the Spanish styled courtyard house with a garden inside. [Photo: Stunnerhomes]
Sudarshan Anagol took a predictable journey and joined the herd of techies when he migrated to Silicon Valley in the pursuit of living his dream. He also complied with the Indian norm of higher education and completed his Masters in Computer Science from the University of Southern California. He then spent 13 years working on cutting edge technologies until the entrepreneur bug caught him. He started PhotoShip in 2003 to enable non-resident Indians to share pictures with their families in India who weren’t necessarily tech savvy. He received angel funding for the venture which also gave him the perfect opportunity to move back to his hometown in Bangalore, India.
After successfully running the company, Sudarshan sold PhotoShip, and along with his wife, Chetana, decided to build their dream home. He met several reputed architects but soon realized their ideas were limited to conventional boxed-designs. They also seemed insensitive to his ideas, and were under-exposed to various design concepts. The most frustrating factor was their inability to understand the couple’s lifestyle and propose a customized design.
After spending an unproductive period with various architects, Sudarshan decided to take the time out to design and build his home.
He spent six months designing the house in consultation with a structural engineer, and gathered a team of laborers.
(Above): Exterior view of Anagol’s house. [Photo: Stunnerhomes]
Sudarshan built his dream home, ‘Samarya,’ which literally translates to a place of celebration, in one and a half years. The name is also a portmanteau of the couple’s daughters Samyukta and Arya.
It’s credit to the couple’s vision that they decided to build the house around a garden instead of the conventional practice of including a garden as an afterthought. Also, such homes were an exception at that time. Sudarshan experimented with many innovative techniques and executed them with utilitarian functionality in mind.
Some of these concepts included self-irrigated pots, central filter system that supplied filtered water to all floors and the refrigerator, anti-skid tiles in the bathroom, and lights on the step to alert his aged parents and to avoid accidents.
The house impressed the industry including Fenesta, India’s largest windows and doors company. The company showcased Sudarshan’s home Samarya as one of the best “garden homes in India” and approached the Anagols to use it as their model home.
(Above): [All Photos: Stunnerhomes]
With Fenesta’s endorsement came credibility. People impressed with Samarya’s exceptional architecture approached Sudarshan to design a similar home that breathed natural light and air. But Sudarshan was forthright – he wasn’t a building architect but a software architect. It is an uncompromising attitude towards building his dream home that had led him to take on the task.
However, in the process of doing so, he fell in love with creating elegance, weaving functional utility with aesthetics, and building something from the ground up. He decided to change the course of his career to pursue something that he felt passionate about.
His customers continue to vouch for his knee-deep involvement in the project and quality output, and praise his competitive pricing model and transparency. These factors are also central to Sudarshan’s venture Stunnerhomes. The company delivers a turnkey solution, architecting home to complete construction with interior and landscape.
It charges the same as any other contractor would for the construction but does not keep the architect’s 5%-10% fee of the project cost.
(Above): Sudarshan Anagol (r) inside his home. [Photo: Stunnerhomes]
Sudarshan has been building homes since 2005. He has worked with a large number of NRIs who live in Bangalore, and has also built a property in Pondicherry. Over time, he has built a stable team from an industry that is notoriously disorganized.
His wife, Chetana an accomplished senior executive leader joined him recently after 18 years in the IT industry to support his growing venture. Among her many wins, she was instrumental in building AOL’s first revenue operations in India.
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