How Delhi-based bar designer Speedx is shaking and stirring things around

About six months ago, one of India’s richest families wanted an entire floor of their home converted into a bar, but they had a condition, an unusual one at that: all the alcohol must be hidden away. The family had never had a bar at home but with the children all grown up, they wanted a high-end entertainment space. They, however, didn’t want to fluster the elders who wouldn’t be comfortable even at the sight of Scotch.

They hired Delhi-based bar designer Speedx. The brief was simple: build a bar that one couldn’t see. To build the “invisible” bar, Speedx used frosted glass and behind-thescenes refrigeration. It concealed alcohol bottles in corner spaces and tucked away state-of-the-art speed rails and containers until these could be summoned for a shindig.

Speedx’s design highs also include creating seven bars in a building for a suiting fabric baron, each bar costing about Rs 9 lakh and one of them even sporting the body of a Lamborghini as bar top.


On a High
Speedx has designed over 250 bars since 2017, including about 70 this year. “When we started out, there were no takers for our services,” says founder Anirudh Singhal, 37, who calls himself a “master blender” of his company. Now, it has close to 100 employees and has recently opened an office in Mumbai, with Bengaluru next on the expansion list.

Two years ago, Indian restaurateurs did not quite look for bar designers. They mostly hired kitchen consultants who designed the bar as well. Since many didn’t really have the expertise on how a bar space should be designed, it was often a muddle. The bartender would have to run around the bar to fix a few drinks and the service would become tardy.

The scene has changed as bars are raising the game and cocktails are calling the shots. There can be as many as 150 cocktails on the menu, trying the skills of the most accomplished bartenders and demanding spaces that are ergonomically designed.

Speedx boasts a long list of restaurant clients now: in Mumbai, it has Americano, Bombay Canteen, Masala Library, Social, Fatty Bao, Glocal and Uno Mas, as well as all 23 outlets of Cafe Delhi Heights in the country. It has designed a 20,000 sq ft bar called Daddy in Bengaluru as well as Delhi’s cocktail bars Dragonfly Experience and Dear Donna, which can take up to 1,500 people each on a weekend. There’s also cricketer Virat Kohli’s Peruvian restaurant Nueva in the capital. Kohli’s brother Vikas has a minority stake in Singhal’s company.

In 2011, Singhal was heading a firm called Alpha-Q that supplied quirky cutlery, crockery and even toilet paper rolls to restaurants across the country. But that business ran its course in a few years. He started Speedx with a seed capital of Rs 90,000. It has closed FY19 with Rs 6.5 crore and a margin of around 13%.

New trends like cocktails on tap are helping Singhal. “In a fast-paced bar, you want fresh cocktails on tap. When a bartender pre-batches a cocktail of 30 litres and kegs it, it becomes commercially viable. It also calls for a wellfit bar,” he says. Speedx was roped in by Kolkata restaurant Episode One that has Mai Tai and Long Island Iced Tea on tap.

Restaurateurs are also embracing the concept of drink more and eat less. Singhal says that of the top 50 restaurant concepts that have opened across India in the last six months, 70-80% are bars or beverage-centric.

Next for Speedx are two projects in Goa called Tataki and a Vietnamese beer garden called Pings Bia Hoi.

While Speedx relies on stainless steel equipment manufactured in India, they import from Brazil and Italy temperature-control dials and compressors, which spike up the cost. The design cost of commercial bars of 100-120 sq ft comes to Rs 7-10 lakh. Home bars are relatively cheaper, starting at about Rs 1.5 lakh. However, Singhal’s current project for a farmhouse in Delhi is opulent: a partially submerged floating bar, with seating around it, that costs about Rs 20 lakh.

High net worth individuals keep raising the bar. “We have built a complete round bar on the rooftop of a Mumbai high-rise building which also happens to be a helipad,” says Singhal. The highs never cease.