BENGALURU: Entrepreneur Bela Patel, who has been handling her mother’s business of making chandeliers since 1995, tells us that the family got into this business quite by chance. Her father Jagadish Patel had come down from London to Hyderabad to get into grape cultivation. However, when the business didn’t take off as planned, he decided on helping his wife, Kundan Patel, with her venture, The Crystal Town.
The company that lights up homes with their designer chandeliers has a wide range of clientele, including the Rashrapati Bhavan, Bangalore Club, Windsor Manor, The Crystal room In Taj Mahal Palace and Hotel Oberoi in Mumbai. And very recently, they were handed charge of restoration at the Laxmi Vilas Palace in Vadodara.
Walking through the workshop in the backyard of her British-styled bungalow in Richmond Town, you come across unfinished work, each of which has a story of its own. The most fascinating story, however, is the conviction and struggles she faced when she decided to bring Crystal Town to Bengaluru in 1995. “I used to handle the Bengaluru business and got into it to help my mother. It was difficult for me to handle both home and the business, so one of my friends, Sneha Naidu, helped me in starting the business here in the city. In 1994, she suggested we organise a small exhibition at Safina Plaza,” says Patel.
That was the turning point in Patel’s life. With the exhibition hitting the sensibilities of Bengalureans, she was able to set up shop here. Her first big project was with The Bangalore Club, after which she was approached by ITC Windsor. For the last three years, she and her team have been re-doing the chandeliers, which they had originally made with glass in 1982 during the hotel’s inauguration, with new Swarovski spectra crystals. A small chandelier of around 2 -2.5 feet high start from `20,000
The initial challenge for Patel when she took over from her mother was to live up to her legacy. “When I started off, I used to take advice from my husband or anybody I trusted, especially when it came to the centre piece of the chandelier. Because that is the one would take the weight of the whole chandelier,” says Patel, adding that many dealers who worked with her mother often supplied her with defective parts initially.
Patel has a rather unconventional method of estimating the size of a chandelier. She does not look for blueprints of the building; rather she does a rough sketch of the chandelier on the floor of the building to conceive the design concept. “It’s easier to keep a track that way,” says Patel, who had seen her mother doing the same.
As time has passed, taste also has, but the 60-year-old entrepreneur says it has not dampened her business, since they keep track of the changing needs of the market.