India's 1st Soundproof,
IoT-Enabled
Work Pod

for WORKLIFE HR LABS

2022 - 2025

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We want to build a product for the world - proudly designed and made in India.

Vikas Sethia, Founder

SCOPE OF WORK

Product Design

Design Engineering

Prototype + Testing

Pilot Batch Assist

A LinkedIN Enquiry

Two years. Several iterations. And one ambitious idea still waiting to become the product its founder had envisioned.

When WorkLife HR Labs reached out through a LinkedIn cold enquiry, the brief went beyond designing a soundproof pod. The vision was clear - the challenge was translating it into a product that could truly live up to it.

This wasn’t about starting over. It was about bringing fresh thinking to an idea shaped by persistence and learning - and finding the right way to finally bring it to life.

THE 5 QUESTION HOOK

Foundation of a meaningful design

Entering a new product category meant questioning every assumption. We began by profiling high-performing mobile professionals and benchmarking both global and local pods to map strengths and gaps.

Our persona insights revealed moods of professional confidence, aspirational luxury, focused calm, and a sharp sophistication. These qualities became the foundation of the pod’s intended character.
While local pods functioned as basic acoustic booths and global pods stood out for build quality and premium aesthetics. However, they missed the opportunity to express a character aligned with the professional business context.

This gap became our opportunity. We set out to design a pod anchored not only in form and function, but also in feeling—projecting confidence and calm, an environment where aspiring leaders could think, focus, and perform at their best.

THE ARCHITECTURE
DECISION

Giving Shape to the Strategy

Every open office has the same enemy — not noise alone, but the constant pull of peripheral chaos. A brief that demanded discipline, sophistication, and precision was really asking for one thing: a space that could hold its shape against that pull, without ever looking like it was trying to.

We turned to architecture for the answer — box-in-box, a solid form protecting a quieter one within it. The pod's outer shell takes the chaos so the person inside doesn't have to.

But a sealed box solves noise and creates a new problem — the quiet turns claustrophobic. So the roof stayed glass, borrowing the same instinct a sunroof gives a car cabin, or a lobby ceiling gives an airport hall: enclosed, but never cut off.

Every seam that could have broken that calm — the hinge, the light, the indicator — was pulled into a single frame instead, so nothing about the pod ever looks unfinished or assembled. And wherever a hand or a spine actually meets the surface, the material turns to wood — the one place the pod allows itself to feel human.

REALISING THE VISUAL INTENT

Engineering
Design

The design evolved in a manner where almost all elements were custom designed to bring the feeling of cohesiveness. We worked on 10 different materials and details were engineered accordingly.

We used aluminium extrusion for structural stability, folded ACP for the side wall skin, and plywood as the pod base, layered with an acoustic carpet to reduce noise. The S-frame was a sheet metal fabrication. Fabric-wrapped acoustic panels, toughened glass, the plastic exhaust unit, occupancy indicators, and other elements made it to a list of 200+ BOM items.

We explored various door opening possibilities, wiring paths, optimized the electronic assembly and overall assembly sequence. Through repeated revision, we finalised the engineering without losing the intent.

Final Design

A Cohesive
& Inclusive
Experience

Form: A shell built to separate - and a roof built to refuse to. Box-in-box, tall, crisp, lean, bold.
Integration: One frame carries what should have been six separate parts - hinge, indicator, and light, with no visible seam between them.
Comfort: The one element that couldn't be hidden was given its own edge instead - a custom exhaust box, nested in the roof, made bold rather than disguised.
Details: Wood only where the body actually touches the pod. Everything else stays hard, cool, and exact - the lock-and-handle assembly, the bespoke furniture, each placed by the same rule.

Iterate, Refine, Protect the Vision

From
Prototype to
Product

Creating the design was the easier half. Executing it nearly broke it.

Most vendor partners had never built anything like it. We coached them through prototyping, built the first prototype after four months - then lost confidence in the their long-term capability and made the decision to restart.

A new vendor partner. The same handholding. More delays. The client coordinated parts delivery across multiple suppliers to keep the project alive. We were on the shop floor daily.

Through two fabrication and assembly cycles and sustained pressure from stakeholders questioning whether the design was buildable - it held. The final product reflects more than 94% of the original design intent. That number is the answer to every stakeholder who questioned it.

INDIA's FIRST
IOT ENABLED MEETING POD

Pilot Launch

Mio was launched in January 2026 at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, Hyderabad

Four pods are now installed at the boarding gates in the airport and are being used by their target users. A second airport installation has been confirmed, with a commitment to scale unit numbers in the coming months.

The startup has been listed among the top 30 startups to watch in 2026. The product has received coverage across major media.

One product that held through two vendor restarts, 200+ custom components, and sustained pressure to compromise. The market has its answer.