India's Car Design Guru Wants to Pass It On

Concept wizard Dilip Chhabria is launching the country's first design school, for an auto market seeing big investment from GM, Nissan, Honda, and Fiat

by Nandini Lakshman

For years, India's best recognized auto designer, Dilip Chhabria, was happy doing what he liked most, jazzing up and customizing cars and buses for rich Indians. He once redesigned a five-seat Maruti Esteem car into a two-seater roadster. That kind of creativity eventually caused his talents, and his company, Dilip Chhabria Design, to be in very high demand by automakers at home and abroad.

Back in early 2003, Chhabria made headlines in the Indian press for his design work on the prototype of the Aston Martin AMV8. The 52-year-old also worked with the design team at General Motors (GM) to help create a prototype of the Chevrolet Beat, a peppy micro-compact that made its debut at the recent New York auto show.

As if all that weren't enough, Chhabria later this year will launch India's first automotive design school. The DC College of Automotive Studies—based in Pune, 75 miles southeast of Mumbai—is set to open in August, and will offer undergraduate and two-year postgraduate programs on automotive styling, transportation design, and engineering. It will accommodate 1,500 students, who will pay between $4,650 and $7,000 a year in tuition, depending on the length of study.

A Buoyant Auto Industry

India will certainly need plenty of auto design talent in the years ahead. There is a huge build-up in auto capacity underway by local and foreign car companies. "India's auto industry is at its most buoyant, and designing cars is such a passion with many youngsters," says Chhabria, sitting surrounded by miniature cars in his workshop in suburban Mumbai.

The job outlook for qualified Indian car designers looks bright these days. In the last 18 months, GM, Fiat (FIA), Honda (HMC), Nissan (NSANY), and Hyundai have announced Indian investments valued at roughly $1.5 billion. Right now India's entire industry—local producers and transplants—collectively manufacture about 1.4 million vehicles a year. That's expected to double by 2008, and if it does, India will surpass Britain and Canada in total car production (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/16/07, "India's High-Octane Car Market").

Chhabria is tapping his international contacts in the auto industry to boost the credentials of his design school, which will boast several instructors with overseas experience. The Indian college is also consulting with Italy's Polytechnic di Turino for help in developing the engineering courses, and the Istituto Europeo di Design for the creative side of the curriculum.

Not a Hub Cap Guy

"The cornerstone is to do something to cater to the human psyche which demands design change," he says. So Chhabria wants to give students an opportunity to design a car from scratch—an opportunity he never had when he joined GM after graduating from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif.

From the beginning of his career, Chhabria exhibited a burning desire to make his mark in automotive design. "I was not going to design door handles and hub caps for 20 years before I got a shot at designing cars," he says. It's clear, given all his work on concept projects in recent years, that he has realized this ambition.

And if Chhabria's automotive design school is a success, he could give the creative talent of India a huge boost and make a lasting mark on the emergence of India's auto market.

Lakshman covers India business for BusinessWeek.