The Deunde Box lets you bring out the artist within
Hyderabad: We now live in a world where there is a subscription service for almost everything. Food, travel, groceries, non-alcoholic mixers, you name it and there is a service for people who don’t want to stir out of their apartments to carry out the mundane aforementioned tasks. The Deunde Box, a monthly subscription service by city-based entrepreneur Marzia Ali, is perfect for people wanting to tinker with their artistic side.
Observing the lack of subscription services for art supplies, psychology student and aspiring artist Marzia Ali decided to start one in the city in 2018 and has managed to sustain it through the pandemic. She reached out to artists here and abroad, got cracking on developing her own line of ceramic palates, paintbrushes, papers and developed monthly themed boxes that contained every kind of tool one would need to bring out their inner artist.
She called it The Deunde Box and began to conduct workshops besides taking part in exhibitions around the city to popularise her business. “A lot of people want to try art, but they couldn’t either because they don’t have the time to shop for the supplies, or inclination or simply don’t know where to start. So, our subscription boxes come in handy, you get a set of watercolours made in-house by us which are non-toxic, high-quality paintbrushes, ceramic palates, canvasses, etc. We also changed the colours every month. If you are a newbie, you can also replicate an original artwork made by artists who collaborate with us. The boxes also come with a guide on how you can do that,” adds Marzia.
Her focus is ‘Make in India’, but the original artworks that come in the boxes come from global artists who receive a small percentage of the sales and recognition. The pandemic has wreaked havoc on her clientele which was a large one across India previously, now the orders she gets are mostly through Instagram which are sporadic.
The 22-year-old and her team of six people used to work out of a studio in Jubilee Hills before, now all the orders are coordinated remotely. While she runs her business, Marzia is also pursuing her Master’s in Psychology from Indian Institute of Research and Psychology and “wants to merge art styles with psychology and develop the field of art therapy even further in India”. The Deunde Box has three plans to choose from starting from Rs1,599.
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