Maulik Shah’s journey from commercial designer to dual founder is the story of someone who refused to accept a problem just because everyone else had learned to live with it.
Editorial Team | Founder Profile | Mumbai
Maulik Shah often says that his biggest insight as an entrepreneur wasn’t about lighting. It was about patience — specifically, how long the design industry had been patiently accepting something that didn’t have to be that way.
The something, in this case, was the habit of deciding on lighting last. After the floor plan is locked. After the furniture is ordered. After the colour scheme is final. When the budget is stretched and the timeline is tight, and the conversation about illumination has to happen in whatever space is left.
Shah watched this pattern repeat itself across enough projects to understand what it was costing — not just aesthetically, but experientially. Spaces that had been designed with genuine care, that had strong concepts and good instincts behind them, falling flat in the final stage because the lighting hadn’t been part of the conversation from the start.
He decided to do something about it. That decision became Zest Creative Co. and Zest Lights.
Starting From Scratch — With a Clear Philosophy
Zest Creative Co. was founded in Mumbai in 2021. Shah built it from the ground up alongside Co-Founder Bhavik Shah and Architect Darshan Gala — a team whose combined strengths cover creative direction, business operations, and architectural execution.
The firm specialises in turnkey commercial interior design: studios, restaurants, office spaces. Full project management, start to finish. The philosophy, from day one, was that design is not decoration. It is the construction of an experience.
Early clients included restaurants, retail spaces, studios, and wellness brands — names like NOMI, Kokino, 2Rue, T Series, Atrangz, Lyke, Byou, Vimal, Tic Tac Toe, MAD, and Neha Nutrifit, each requiring a different atmosphere, a different story, a different emotional outcome from the space.
“Every space has a purpose beyond its function. A good design makes you feel that purpose the moment you walk in.”
The Gap That Became a Business
Through those projects, Shah’s original frustration took shape as a more defined opportunity. The lighting problem wasn’t random. It was structural. It existed because no one had built a resource that sat at the intersection of design thinking and lighting expertise — something that could serve a project the way Zest Creative Co. was already serving its clients: from the beginning, with full ownership of the outcome.
Zest Lights was that resource.
Unlike a conventional supplier, Zest Lights doesn’t hand you a catalogue. It starts with a conversation about your space — its purpose, its feel, its design intent — and builds a lighting strategy from there. The product range is broad: panel lights, downlights, spotlights, track lighting, profile systems, tunable solutions, custom decorative fixtures. But the range is secondary to the thinking. Because the thinking is what makes the difference.
“Lighting has the ability to transform architecture. But when it is treated as an afterthought, its potential is never fully realized.”
What the Journey Has Taught Him
Shah is thoughtful when asked what founding two ventures simultaneously has taught him. He talks about the value of working backwards from the client’s experience rather than forward from a product or a service. He talks about the discipline of staying consultative even when it would be easier to just sell something. And he talks about the importance of having the right people alongside you.
In Bhavik Shah and Darshan Gala, he found collaborators who share the core belief: that a space is only as good as the experience it creates, and that lighting is one of the most powerful tools available to shape that experience.
Together, the team has built something that didn’t exist in Mumbai before. Not just a design firm that also does lighting, or a lighting supplier that can advise on design. But a practice that treats the two as inseparable — because, as Maulik Shah has spent the last several years demonstrating, they are.
The Vision He’s Building Toward
When Shah talks about where both ventures are headed, the word he comes back to is integration. Not just of design and lighting within a project, but of his two businesses into a unified platform — a single point of access for architects, developers, and businesses who want to build spaces that genuinely work.
He is building that platform one project at a time, the same way he built the insight behind it: by paying close attention to what spaces need, and refusing to settle for less than what they deserve.
