India’s best bars are often discussed through the language of cocktails—technique, flavour, originality, and the ease with which they hold their own against global peers. Yet there’s more to its greatness than what’s in the glass. Whether it’s Bengaluru’s Bar Spirit Forward or Soka, Delhi’s PCO, or Goa’s Boilermaker, each has its own identity but they operate in remarkably similar ways. Service doesn’t buckle under pressure, bartenders move without negotiating for space, and equipment feels intentional.
What’s striking is that 28 of the 30 bars listed among 30BestBars 2025 were designed by Anirudh Singhal, founder and CEO of SpeedX Hospitality, a Delhi-based bar design and manufacturing company. Singhal also leads Haus of Bars, a consumer-focused venture offering premium home bars, grills, and lifestyle-led bar solutions.
When Singhal founded SpeedX in 2015, he already knew where bars often fail. Nearly a decade in hotel F&B operations—including marquee Hyatt openings in India and abroad—had trained him to spot not just aesthetic gaps, but the invisible friction points that slow service, exhaust staff, and undermine consistency.
Over the years, he has built nearly 980 bars across India. One of his earliest projects, Social at Todi Mill in Mumbai (2015–16), demanded a bar that could handle high volumes without slowing down. “The intent was to make it fun, easy to prepare, and fast,” Singhal says. “Social has a high turnover, you don’t expect people to wait.” Today, he adds, “bar designs are only as good as how they work for the bartender. Everything revolves around them.”
SpeedX’s approach has become especially relevant as bartender-forward bars rise across India. As more Indian bartenders travel internationally for guest shifts and collaborations, they return with a sharper awareness of how top bars abroad function—and the standards they expect at home. Design, increasingly, has had to catch up.
For Singhal, some principles are non-negotiable, and ergonomics tops the list. “Ergonomics is the new economics,” he says. “It directly affects how efficiently a bar operates, and how much money it makes.”
Take depth, SpeedX’s standard is two feet. Anything deeper pushes the bartender farther from the guest, weakening communication in a high-decibel environment. Poor ergonomics also take a toll on the body. Bartenders spend long hours on their feet, bending forward repeatedly during service. “If you design a bar where someone has to lean or stretch constantly, you’re setting them up for injury,” he says. Counter height, therefore, becomes critical—not just for the person working behind it, but for the guest seated across.
As cocktail programmes grow more technical, bar design has evolved in parallel. With Indian bartenders now working with rotovaps, clarification, precise temperature control, and complex prep workflows, the bar has become as much a production space as a service counter.
This alignment between menu and layout has also led to the rise of omakase-style bars, where guests sit at the same height as the bartender, creating an intimate, almost performative exchange. “I read somewhere that omakase is the new avocado toast for bar designs,” Singhal says, smiling. “It’s trendy now, even though we built our first one four years ago.”
What gives him an edge is his role as a jury member for the Best Bar Design Award at The World’s 50 Best Bars. “It gives me exposure to the best bar designs in the world,” he says.
After designing so many bars, Singhal finds it hard to single out one defining challenge—but a few projects tested his thinking sharply. Papa’s, for instance, was formative for both its scale and its lack of it. Within a compact footprint, the team had to fit a fully functional kitchen and bar while delivering global-standard food and cocktails at speed. “When you see what the team puts out from that space today,” Singhal says, “it gives you confidence that the design really worked.”
Bengaluru’s Bar Spirit Forward posed the opposite challenge. Its omakase counter, over 30 feet long, is the longest SpeedX has ever built. “Executing something that long, coordinating with architects, and maintaining consistency across the counter isn’t easy,” he notes.
Goa, meanwhile, remains one of the trickiest markets. Boilermaker required a complete rethink: “It’s essentially a dive bar with five-star standards,” Singhal says. Open-air design meant the bar had to withstand heat, humidity, and constant exposure while keeping refrigeration and performance intact. “There’s a massive beer line along the back wall, all visible. Integrating that without compromising temperature or efficiency was a challenge.”
In the coming month, he’s set to launch a new series of cocktail stations built around a triangular design—a global first, according to Singhal. “If you look at a typical bar station, everything is rectangles or squares, at best a semi-circle,” he says. “Ergonomically, the triangle is the most efficient shape.” The layout maximises every millimetre of space, reducing reach time and movement.
It’s clear that the secret ingredient behind every winning concept is Singhal—his unerring eye and gift for efficiency making it all work.
