DECEMBER 11, 2006
Design
By Nandini Lakshman
Designing for India's Consumers
The government is starting a program to train more designers who can appeal to the diverse tastes of a complex nation
India is launching a new initiative to make design a top national priority. It was announced at the "Design With India" summit conference, sponsored by the Confederation of Indian Industry, that ran Dec. 4 through 6 in Delhi. There, Ajay Dua, Secretary of the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, said he wants India's outsourcing industry to embrace design as its next area of expertise.
Dua also called for local, U.S., European, Japanese, and other global companies that design products for the Indian consumer to improve their understanding of Indians' complex needs and wants.
As part of this new campaign, the government will begin to promote more design schools. Today, India has only about a dozen design programs, compared with 241 in China.
To raise the profile of design, the government is granting the National Institute of Design a much higher status within the university system. And, even more important, the government is launching an ambitious program to promote public-private partnerships between corporations and design schools.
Maybe Too Comfortable There's no doubt that industries in India must start thinking more seriously about design. Any number of multinationals have stumbled trying to peddle Western goods to Indians without any changes in product or packaging.
But even Indian companies have committed gaffes. When an Indian bank opened one of its branches in the rural heartland of the northern India state of Rajasthan recently, it offered up a space with all the modern day trappings—granite flooring, plush sofas, and a safe deposit vault three times the size of an average rural home.
The glitzy façade did attract locals. But they were not comfortable in the bank's space. The sari-clad women and their turbaned husbands who were at the bank were completely out of sync with the modern setting. While the women, with their heads covered, sat on the floor as a traditional mark of respect for their menfolk, the men—accustomed to squatting on the floor—curled up their feet on the sofa.
It Has to Click At the safe deposit vault, where villagers store family jewels and land-related documents, there was no screen to shield a couple inside from prying eyes. So a woman used one end of her sari to cover her husband while he pulled out a safe deposit box.
These vignettes were part of the presentation at the design summit in Delhi, where the dominant theme was the importance of getting the cultural cues right in as diverse a society as India. IBM (IBM) and Microsoft (MSFT) may employ thousands in India, but it is one of the toughest marketplaces to crack, and customized design is the key.
Selling products made for American, European, or Korean markets across India doesn't guarantee success. Indeed, it may guarantee failure.
"It is critical to bring realism and relevance to a design world that has become commoditized," says Manoj Kothari, founder of Pune-based Onio Design. So when his studio designed a pen, the cap had a satisfying click sound when it was shut. That went down well with consumers, since Indians relate the click to the closing and preserving of an object (just like Americans and Europeans like a solid "thud" sound for their car doors).
Finding Focus in a Vast Land Being too modern and contemporary can be dangerous in the Indian market, says L. K. Das, head of Innovation & Design at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi. For example, he points out that Indians understand old fashioned round faucets. But modern day variations leave people perplexed. "The fundamentals of consumerism are built on other people consuming, and when that doesn't happen the design is a failure," says Das.
The vastness of India can also be baffling to companies and designers looking for a focused approach. U.S. retailer Wal-Mart (WMT) may have entered India, but setting up outlets and getting mass consumers to buy from its stores will not be that easy, says San Francisco-based emerging markets strategist Niti Bhan. The trick is to create products that have sales volumes but "resonate with subsets of culture," says Bhan.
With the cultural and communal diversities in each of its 28 states, these subsets are tough to understand even for Indians. "India is not one country but a conglomeration of many countries that people have to recognize," says Bhan.
Even simple objects send off complex signals. Take the quintessential "lota," or a tiny mud pot. Hold it in your palm and it denotes an offering in a temple. Spread your fingers around it and it becomes a container you can drink from. "The cultural diversities make an object so versatile," says M P Ranjan, principal designer at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad in the western state of Gujarat.
Shopping Mannerisms And the simplest acts of shopping show how different Indians can be from their Western counterparts. Indian retailers are importing designers from stores such as Selfridges and Macy's to design their retail spaces, but they have to tweak their displays based on consumer insights.
A leading retail chain realized that piling folded clothes items on the shelf was not helping sales. But when they put shirts and trousers on hangers, they flew off the racks. Why? Indians need to touch and feel everything they want to buy—but they feel inhibited about opening a folded item.
Fusing these insights with design and business is an uphill task. In India, the designer is still on the sidelines at most companies.
Now, with the economy growing, designers are in demand. The country needs at least 8,000 to 9,000 new designers every year, yet design schools turn out barely 10% of that. The government initiative comes just in time.
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