Two summers ago, I registered Revisual Labs with a simple dream — to make data visualisation mainstream in how India tells stories.

Today, our full-time team of five, comprising designers, developers, and storytellers, is India’s sole agency focused entirely on data visualisation and information design. It’s a surprising gap to fill in the world’s most populous nation, especially when information design agencies have flourished for decades in the western world and parts of Asia, such as Singapore and Thailand.

We celebrated this milestone at the Outlier Conference in Miami, where Revisual Labs won the silver for Outstanding Studio at the International Information Is Beautiful Awards.

The Outstanding Studio Award Silver being announced for Revisual Labs on stage at the Outlier Conference The moment Revisual Labs was announced as the silver winner for Outstanding Studio.

Receiving the trophy on stage at the Information Is Beautiful Awards ceremony in Miami Receiving the trophy — still can’t believe this happened on our 2-year birthday.

Here’s what I said on stage that evening:

I wasn’t supposed to tell anybody, but they told us we had won something. I had no clue what it was. One category over, second category over — what have we won? This is better than anything I had expected. As I said yesterday, today, right in this moment, is Revisual’s 2-year birthday. So there couldn’t have been a better gift — as a studio in a country where there are no data viz studios. To get this international recognition means a lot, not just for me but for the entire Revisual team, our collaborators, our clients. Thank you so much to the team — Swathi, Divya, Schubert, Aman — who show up every day and make things possible. This means a lot for us as a country, as a community.

Alone we can do so little, together so much

When I left journalism to freelance, I realised my ambitions were bigger than my abilities. I could code a frontend, but needed help with backend development. I could crunch data and stitch a story, but art direction wasn’t my strength. I could not draw to save my life.

Still, I wanted to build dashboards and diagrams, interactive experiences, and bring data and information closer to people, in ways they’d remember.

That was my sign to build a team. With specialists on board at Revisual Labs, we have managed to do so many of those things.

Building a practice, one project at a time

In the last two years, we’ve worked with clients ranging from UN agencies to Indian think tanks. Here’s some of what we’ve built:

  • Interactive web stories on environmental conservation work, migration and the Indian elections
  • Dashboards that are fast, intuitive, and in line with client needs and budgets
  • Design-ready publications, including a report with 60+ charts on India’s digital economy and a 100-page illustrated report on climate-resilient cities
  • Physical visualisations — a 6x6 ft installation with participatory elements

We’ve also delivered data storytelling trainings at The World Economic Forum (Geneva), The Economic Times, Rohini Nilekani Foundation, Dalberg, Plaksha University, IIT Hyderabad, IIIT Delhi, IIT Guwahati, NID Bangalore and VIPS Institute.

It’s everything I imagined a data storytelling team could do, and more.

Who are our services for?

Our work can help anyone who needs to visually communicate their research or data in powerful ways. Data-oriented teams who want their findings to resonate, communications teams aiming for clarity and impact, organisations and think tanks with data to share and a story to tell. You don’t need to come with a finished idea. We help ideate through a collaborative process, and solve based on your needs and budget.

Who makes this happen at Revisual?

All of this has been possible thanks to our mighty full-time team: Aman Bhargava, Divya Ribeiro, Schubert De Abreu, and Swathi Singh. As I focus on growing other parts of the business, their creativity, hard work, and execution bring our grand ideas to life.

We also have brilliant advisors, collaborators and former interns who have contributed to various projects: Gabrielle Merite, Amanda Mukelec, Amy Cesal, Aabha Joshi, Tulika Patel, Deepali Kank, Manas Sharma, Rohini Vasudevan, Aishwarya Viswanathan, Shoaib Ahmed, Nirja Desai, Surbhi Bhatia, Prakriti Bakshi, Rashi Shah, Karan Chaudhary, Monisha Keswani and Shivani Singh.

But a lot of it is also dependent on our amazing clients who trust us to bring their dreams and vision to life.

A few months later, I gave a talk at ADI DoBeDo Pro about the lessons from building Revisual Labs — Five Realisations from Trying to Build a Niche Design Practice.