Amit Bagga has a thing for aesthetics, noting, “I have an eye for details. When I go into one of my restaurants, I am looking at everything and if any detail is out of place I notice it and feel the need to correct it.” He goes on to add: “If someone from my creative team comes in with a concept, I look at it and say that things are missing here and there, and they tell me, ‘sir it’s not possible, we thought of everything.’ Then when they zoom in they see what I mean and make the changes” notes Bagga, before going into details.
“I have a very strong belief that your five senses are everything; they define what you do. When I was developing the Daryaganj brand, I thought that when someone enters the environment, all their five senses should be engaged. That is what I hope to incite,” admits Bagga. That brings us to his third space. “I am a person who likes to do new things and innovate, and do research on them. I am also a big data fiend, I like to analyse every order from each table and see what happens, what people order, and take it from there.
“When the pandemic took place, Bagga notes it changed his life, in a large part because he had an extra room. “It was just a store room filled with extra stuff from around the home. We were about to move into a new office but all that got stalled because of COVID-19. So I decided to make a space of my own,” says Bagga, adding, “I decided to take this space because of the tree outside, which overlooked the video. It was a time of negativity, and I needed a space where I could rediscover my five senses and bring it out there.” When nature is out there, Bagga, like most other people on the planet, feels good, hence his view on the tree.
“Apart from all that was happening, nature just makes you feel good. That’s what I needed. I also made sure that there was indirect lighting everywhere, so I got old style lights. The flooring is wooden and I got one of my Chesterfield sofas there, as well as a beanbag. It’s a nice warm space,” elaborates Bagga, who notes that the different textures of the furniture catered to his ideal of five senses. “I have a playlist of music for two-three hours muddled with sounds of nature, because that is calming and relaxing, as well as inspirational in a way. So that takes care of sound,” muses Bagga, who uses diffusers to flood his third space with fresh citric smells, and sits on his beanbag to read.
“Naturally I had all my meals there while I was home and thinking,” says Bagga who was thinking up something fierce. “Daryaganj is a fine dine, experiential restaurant, and I wanted to figure out how to replicate it in peoples’ homes. And that’s what we are doing with our delivery now: all five senses will be engaged, wait till you try it.” Another development apart from the new space is his invention of the ‘curiosity box’.
“I was trying to figure out how to recreate a dining experience at home,” notes Bagga, who, as previously mentioned, enjoys different textures in his third space, from his beanbag to his working desk to his Chesterfield. “I like to experiment myself and so I came up with this curiosity box that I made myself, just as a prototype. That’s what was recreated into a delivery box for Daryaganj, where we try and provide you the entire experience of the restaurant at your own home, catering to all five senses.”