ARCHAID was set up in November 1980 with Ravi Kumar Nair and Akhila Ravikumar as partners. The aim of the firm was to provide consultancy in architecture and interior design projects. In fact ARCHAID itself is an acronym for ARCHitecture And Interior Design.

Ravi and Akhila’s daughter Mandira who finished her bachelor’s degree in architecture joined the firm as an associate in the year 2008.

The firm started as a one room office at home with the two partners and one draftsman and an office boy. Those were the days of manual drafting and the small room had to house two drawing boards as well as the table for discussions with clients. Within a year it moved to a more spacious premises across the road on the first floor of an existing house. Soon it had a staff of five draftspersons and a secretary besides the office boy and the two partners.

This is where ARCHAID grew, so to say and in 1988 moved back to the ground floor of the partners’ house to a space designed with its specific requirements in mind and became a full fledged architectural consultancy firm with an engineering section for quantity surveying and checking of bills, an accountant and complete CAD drafting facilities.

The firm has handled an array of projects ranging from individual residences in Chennai, Madurai, Kodaikanal and Coimbatore and apartment blocks to commercial buildings, interiors for offices, banks and restaurants, hospitals,