Design and communications professional Abhisek Sarda was 25 when he launched his first start up. It involved telling a lot of senior corporate honchos how to run their businesses. The firm was appropriately called Guts Service Design.

In order to appear older and be taken seriously, Abhisek, “like many young entrepreneurs”, grew a beard. This is what prompted the name for the now 28 year-old’s latest venture – Beard Design – a company that does branding and web design for start-ups. “Shave it (the beard) off,” is his advice to entrepreneurs. “We’ll help you get taken seriously.”

Feast of the Goatee

Now Beard Design, made up of ten designers, isn’t the cheapest option on the block. It does however, aim to provide start-ups with high quality work at reasonable costs. “We do this by being more efficient and cutting frills. We’ll give our clients 5 logo options instead of 20 for instance, or we’ll figure stuff out over email instead of making trips for meetings,” says Abhisek.

And although Beard Design is based out of Goa, none of their clients are from there. So far at least. They’ve done the packaging for a Mumbai-based gourmet chai brand called Tea Trunk; brand identity for Oklisten.com, a cool indie music discovery platform; and branding for Story Ninja, a story consulting service. Sign up with Beard and branding will cost you about Rs 40,000, including brand identity, logo and business cards.

“With many of our clients,” Abhisek says, “we get so closely involved in their start-ups that we treat their venture as our own and do everything required for it, whether the client asks for it or not.” It’s clear that Beard loves start-ups very mooch.

They Also Present

Along with Beard, Abhisek seems to be the facial heir to a clutch of other ventures that make life simple, one them being the Ppt Salon, a barber that “grooms your office presentations”. Their services vary from giving you a power point presentation in 48 hours – “persuasive, well-structured and beautifully designed”, of course – a corporate account for those who need many presentations a month and elaborate ones that require photography and research. Let it slides.

The Salon has clients all over the world including California, and says the service costs “less than a flight ticket.”

Although Abhisek’s been advising entrepreneurs to shave off their beards, it must be noted that he still has one. Face of habit, we suppose.

Getting there: Beard Design, visit the Facebook page here, brand identity starts at Rs 40,000; Ppt Salon, visit www.pptsalon.com, Rs 8,999.