New businesses find old homes

Many entrepreneurs are choosing bungalows as old as a hundred years old to start new businesses.

A heritage property now converted into a restaurant once belonged to legendary film producer and director Y V Rao, who made the first Kannada talkie, Sati Sulochana, in 1934.

Located in Malleswaram, the sprawling white villa — complete with a vintage fountain and lush greenery — has now been transformed into Hermitage, a vegetarian restaurant. The building is over a hundred years old.

Run by Nitin Polur and Umme Farnaz, it was inaugurated in July. “The house is popularly known as Shooting Mane, as it has been featured in multiple south Indian movies.

It has a lot of history, given who once lived here. So, when we decided to start a restaurant, we knew we wanted to celebrate that aspect. You see pictures of the filmmaker when you enter the space,” Farnaz says.

It took them two and a half months to transform the space. “We have made minimal changes. To the front porch area we have added French windows, and we broke down one wall. We wanted the space to retain its old world charm. The rooms are intact, and we have also kept the red oxide flooring,” she adds. The restaurant can seat up to 80 people.

One of the challenges faced while converting the property was the lack of storage. “It is not easy to convert a home kitchen into a commercial one. We make do with the space we have,” says Farnaz.

Spandana Gopal and Malini Malik found a home for their design store in a building from the ’70s that once used to be a one-of-a-kind school provision store in Halasuru. Called General Items, the concept store is shy of 300 sq ft. It sells everything from notebooks to homeware, and also acts as the official retailer for Tiipoi, a design studio and producer based in Bengaluru and London, founded by Spandana.

“We had been looking to create a space for Tiipoi in Bengaluru for a long time. But we didn’t just want to open it in any ordinary store. We wanted the place to have a special story. And when we came across this property, our heart was set on it. The brand ‘General Items’ is built off the history of this place. We have retained the text from the old store that reads ‘student notebooks and other general items’, and the main structure and facade remains the same,” Malini tells Metrolife. It opened in August.

Childhood home

Surrounded by a canopy of trees, Ria Belliappa’s upcoming pastry shop in Jayanagar pays homage to her grandparents and is located inside her childhood home. It is called Juny’s Bakehouse, and is set to open next month. The house was built in the 1960s.

“I have so many memories attached to the house — from my grandparents having people over to all my cooking experiments. So after being away from Bengaluru for about 10 years, when I decided I wanted to return and start my own bakehouse, it only felt right to do it at my own place,” says Ria. The space is named after her grandmother.

Ria has ensured the structure of the house remains intact. “The house had to remain true to its original form. We have retained a lot of the architecture — from the box windows to the arches. The step at the entrance was laid by my grandfather and we have retained that as well,” she adds.

Working with an old building also comes with its fair share of hurdles. “We couldn’t bring down some walls as there were some electrical lines running through them. We had to change the entire plumbing and electrical system,” she explains.

An abandoned house in Indiranagar has been converted into a cafe. Two friends, Sagarika Joshi and Garvit Luthra, opened Muru Muru four months ago.

“The inspiration came from the property. When we were looking for available places, we came across this house that is over 60 years old. We knew that if we set up shop here, it needed to be super cosy and have that old world charm. It helped us build our brand,” says Garvit.

The transformation took about four months. ”We broke down a few walls to open up the space. As the house wasn’t in use, the kitchen wasn’t operational. There was no drainage. So we had to sort all of this out. But we made sure not to make any changes on the outside,” he adds. 

Ishtaa in Jayanagar and Ajji House by Subko in Shanti Nagar are two other recently opened restaurants/cafes that are making use of old buildings.