A talk about what it takes to build something small, specific, and powerful — delivered at ADI DoBeDo Pro in Delhi NCR in October 2025.

Revisual Labs is not a graphic design agency. Not a brand design agency. Not a product design agency. We are an information design and data visualisation agency — and building something this niche in India has come with its own set of realisations.

Journalism to Data Journalism to Graphic Journalism to Data Viz Consulting to Agency Life

How do you build something small, specific, and powerful?

Realisation #1: Find something you care about

A college admission essay excerpt from 2014 A 2014 college admission essay — the seed was always there.

I cared about combining technology and storytelling. That care wasn’t something I manufactured — it showed up in my college essay in 2014, long before I knew what data visualisation even was. The work that followed — homicide trackers, Bollywood music timelines, visual stories about Lata Mangeshkar — was a natural extension of that care.

Realisation #2: Commit and stick to it

Running a creative business has nothing to do with creativity. It is first, a business.

Running a creative business has nothing to do with creativity. It is first, a business. And when you’re niche, you face the niche problem:

The Niche Problem — If you are not an analyst or graphic designer, what are you?

Francis Gagnon quote — Data visualisation is a domain with high need and low demand Francis Gagnon put it perfectly.

Data visualisation is a domain with high need and low demand. People need it, but they don’t always know they need it. The data life cycle — collection, analysis, communication — has plenty of agencies serving collection and analysis. But data communication? Almost no specialist agencies in India.

The data life cycle — plenty of agencies for collection and analysis, almost none for data communication in India

Realisation #3: Stay curious and keep applying your craft

Curiosity is what keeps the work alive. We’ve applied our craft across wildly different domains — from PhonePe’s investor relations to IOM’s refugee journeys from Ukraine, from the Global Kidney Health Atlas for ISN to a physical data installation for the Google News Summit, from a WWF data story on India’s dairy cold chain to child nutrition research in Telangana, from Mera First Vote with Behanbox to countless other projects.

Some of our design and development offerings — publication design, customised dashboards, maps and cartography, charts and infographics, physical data installations, interactive data stories

The curiosity to enter new domains and the commitment to bring our craft to each one — that’s what keeps things interesting.

Realisation #4: Collaborate with people who make you better

When one person does it all — data, design, code — it works, but rarely wows. For things to truly shine, you need people who are great at each of these. We understand what each other do, but have deep-rooted expertise in our own discipline.

Data viz is interdisciplinary — and for that, a team that echoes the same is the only way Data experts, developers, designers, writers, storytellers.

This interdisciplinary approach led to recognition — Revisual Labs won the Silver for Outstanding Studio at the Information is Beautiful Awards 2024.

Outstanding Studio — Silver, Information Is Beautiful Awards 2024

Realisation #5: A community is essential to create an ecosystem

You can’t build a niche practice in isolation. You need a community around it — people who understand the work, push you forward, and grow the ecosystem together. That’s what VizChitra is about.

The 5 Cs

The 5 Cs — Care, Commit, Curiosity, Collaboration, Community

Do something so deeply, for so long, that what once felt niche starts to feel necessary.

This talk was delivered just months after Revisual Labs celebrated two years and won the silver for Outstanding Studio at the Information Is Beautiful Awards — read that story here.