“It is not important where Apple (products) is manufactured. It can be manufactured tomorrow in Colombia, the day after in Papua New Guinea. But it is extremely important that Apple is designed in California and Apple’s valuation is because of that.” 

That statement from Avik Chattopadhyay, chairperson of the XLRI Centre for Automobile Design and Management and founder of the Indian School for Design of Automobiles. is actually the starter of a billion thought processes. We were, of course, chatting about Indian automotive design and not handheld connectivity devices, and Apple was simply an example. But it was an example that hit home. 

From an automobile manufacturing point of view, India has arrived and settled. We now have genuinely world-class manufacturing, producing truly world-class products. Our manufacturing processes in the automobile sector are not only efficient and productive but also boast a high level of safety. The products that come out of these facilities find place around the world. What next, then? Or is this it? “The last frontier is design,” says Avik.

After more than two decades in the Indian and global automotive landscape, Avik set up the country’s only design school or institute offering a super-specialisation in automobile design. The school, called the Indian School for Design of Automobiles, or INDEA in short, aims to produce the next generation of Indian automotive designers, hopefully trained to push the boundaries of design. But we’ll pause here. I’m not sure about you, but I have forever confused design with styling. So, I ask him if they are the same.

“Styling is a part of design,” he explains, adding, “Design is something which is an outcome and also encapsulates the DNA of the brand.” 

Let’s break it down a little. Design allows us to identify a vehicle even without recognisable symbols like badges. For instance, a Ferrari is instantly recognisable as one and cannot be confused with a Lamborghini even though both are Italian supercars. It’s in the very design that they are differentiated. Or a Maruti Suzuki Alto and a Renault Kwid, for that matter, at the other, very extreme end of the spectrum. It only takes a second to figure out which is which, with or without the badge. That is design.

Design is also the result of a need. For instance, the very first Jeep was designed for a purpose. There have been several other products from other brands around the world that have offered similar vehicles, and it would be fair to argue that they were all essentially designed in a similar fashion because each was meant to deliver the same or similar outcome. The fact that they all looked different was a factor of styling.

Styling is more cosmetic. Will a vehicle have door handles that are flush-fitted and pop out when the door needs to be opened? Styling. The 1980s fad of pop-up headlamps in sports cars was a styling fashion. Citing the Mahindra BE 6 as an example, Avik says, “The current touchscreen today and the size of the touchscreen and all that is a style factor, is a style form, because currently it's the flavour of the season. So, tomorrow's BE6 may have a much smaller screen, okay, may have more tactile buttons… But it would still not take away from the DNA of the BE 6 as a form factor, as a design.”

Another interesting point that comes up is that as far as transport is concerned, there are three things to consider. There is automobile design, which is what we have talked about so far. Then there is automotive design, where the field of vision is expanded and we start including component design and even manufacturing processes into the realm. “For example, a very simple thing is that headlamps are very expensive, not just by themselves, but also because change in headlamp shapes lead to change of dies. Okay. And the lesser number of die changes you make, you're basically being more efficient,” he says.

Mobility design, on the other hand, is a much larger subject. “Firstly, you're covering not just the road, but you're covering road and rail and water and air…secondly, you're looking at the ecosystem around each mode of transport. So, your focus is not just on the product…not just on its components, but your focus is also on how the product moves, where it moves…what are the enablements you can create…in the environment around the product to make it move better, safer, more efficiently.”

In the Indian context, that’s much too large a subject, and one that we have failed at consistently so far since Independence. “I was just reading some data, not today, but around a year and a half ago, which said that 40 million Indians still walk to work every day. Which means that even public transport, the most basic form of public transport, is not available to them. And then when you see the…data of penetration of buses per thousand, it is 1.6 buses per thousand people. It is as bad as that. So now who's actually going to change it? The needs of the nation are actually to be addressed jointly by the policy maker and by the industry,” he adds.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Greed, corruption, thoughtlessness, and a complete lack of integrated thought processes mean poor mobility design. But that’s a story for another day. 

Back to automobile design, I’m keen to know what he thinks of present-day Indian automobile design. “India continues to be manufacturing based.” It is hard to ignore the truth of that statement, even if I actually want to. At least in the four-wheeler world, there are hardly any products that exude a specific Indianness in their design. It’s far easier to spot a Korean ethos or a French design or a German one. But Avik also explains that this is part of the evolution of design and how it works.

“We started off with nothing 50 years ago. Now we are at a stage where our manufacturing is truly world class, our supply chain is world class. Our service systems are world class. Our retail standards are also fairly world class, given the sheer number of people we cater to. So now is the time when we need to focus on what is the last frontier. The last frontier is design.” Even the good old Ambassador that ruled our roads for more decades than one cares to remember wasn’t an Indian design. It was essentially the designed-in-England Morris Oxford.

So, if we are to focus as a nation on design, what should the designer focus on? What is his or her final frontier? Is there a frontier at all? “The first subject of our annual debate, the design school debate last year, was about: Does India need a design DNA? Do we need DNA first and foremost? And if we answer ourselves that, yes, we do need DNA, then we can set about trying to work out,” he says.

An Indian automobile design DNA: a form factor that instantly allows one to identify a vehicle as a uniquely Indian design in a sea of Japanese, Korean, Chinese, German, French, Italian, Nordic, and American designs. Will it happen?

“I don’t think it will happen over the next five years. I don’t even see it happening over the next 10 years. But one of the key components of the curriculum at the school is this concept of the Indian design DNA. Are we going to do it? No. But we will start the movement. Even if we don’t get it over the next 15 years, there will at least be this conscious attempt.”

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