Thursday, January 17, 2008

MSRSAS Design Student - Brijesh Kumar's Car Design at AutoExpo New Delhi


Automotive design gets ready for a greater role in India
Ravi Krishnan
New Delhi
With global car makers looking at India for innovative automobile products, the scope for indigenously designed vehicles is growing



Brijesh Kumar, 29, wants to “break away from the boxy, conventional way of car design.” So, the three-wheeler he designed is as Indian as it gets on the country’s roads—it looks like a cow.

A model of the car designed by Brijesh Kumar displayed at the 9th Auto Expo in New Delhi

Kumar, a student of MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bangalore, and eight other students are presenting clay models of their designs at the Auto Expo, part of a competition whose theme is a “truly Indian vehicle.”

“I would like to design automobiles that are environment- friendly and use new materials,” says Kumar, who sees the rapidly growing auto sector in the country—International companies such as Renault SA and General Motors Corp. are setting up design centres in the country—through the eyes of a potential employee.

Kumar may be onto a good concept, though he is still in the early stages of his design.

His career ambitions coincide with a turn of events that has forced global car makers to look at India for innovative automobile products, a process that has intensified since last week when Tata Motors Ltd unveiled the Tata Nano, the world’s cheapest car.

Even though cars such as the Mahindra Scorpio and the Tata Nano have been totally developed and engineered in India, they have sourced design and styling inputs from Europe.

So, while the first Indian car to be 100% designed and made in India is some time away, enthusiasts such as Kumar could make all the difference in a sector which has grown at double-digit rates in the past five years. While some manufacturers have set up fledgling design centres in the country, these are typically used to make cosmetic changes to existing models and interiors.

“We are looking to become a centre of expertise for the whole company for interiors,” says Shiela Sarvar, who heads General Motors’ design centre in Bangalore. But the company is also developing “the ability to design vehicles for India because Indian customers are unique,” she adds.

General Motors or GM, which has an engineering centre that employs 800 people in India, has set up a vehicle design centre at Bangalore with 60 designers.

The cost of developing an automobile can go up to $1 billion (Rs3,930 crore) in Western countries while in India, it costs only a fifth to do so. Still, since styling, or the looks of a car, is the first thing that attracts consumers, companies go to reputed centres of design rather than risk Indian ones.

“It takes 25 years to establish oneself in this field,” says Dilip Chhabria, a former GM designer who set up an independent design studio in Pune in the early 1990s, and is one of the early birds in automotive design. While he wouldn’t say what the revenues of his company were, he admitted that 60% of his earnings came from independent customers who wanted to modify the looks of their cars. The rest comes from providing original designs to auto makers.

“I feel Indians have the aptitude for styling, but lack the confidence,” says Pawan Goenka, president (automotive) of Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, India’s largest utility vehicle maker. Goenka, who spearheaded the development of the Scorpio, says the company had to take styling inputs from abroad for the vehicle, but that it would be capable of fully styling a vehicle in-house by the turn of the decade. This is the same deadline which Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, the country’s largest car maker, has set for its design and engineering team too.

The initial flow of companies setting up design centres has led to as many as 15 institutes introducing courses in automotive or transportation design in the country.

Auto design is also getting more classroom space in design centres that have traditionally focused on other industries.

The National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, launched a postgraduate course of two-and-a-half years’ duration in transportation and automobile design in 2006. MIT, Pune, and IIT Madras also have programmes on automobile engineering, but the industry says that finding design manpower is still a problem because between the institutes, only about 300 designers graduate every year.

“It’s a turning point in the Indian auto industry,” says Pradyumna Vyas, mentor, transportation and automobile design, and head, education, NID. “The role of design, more than ever, in the Indian auto industry is gaining increasing importance if the ongoing auto show is any indication of the shape of things to come. ” NID has also signed a memorandum of understanding with Italian design houses and schools such as Pininfarina SpA and Domus Academy where their students go on exchange programmes.

“All...are fighting for the same skills,” says Sarvar. The industry is still nascent and the available manpower “needs exposure and experience,” she adds.

While that’s something GM and Sarvar are trying to build up, the speed at which the country’s schools scale up design courses and the willingness of companies to take a gamble on a product designed in-house may decide when the truly Indian vehicle will hit the roads.

Rajeshwari Sharma contributed to this story.

- Posted by Prakash Unakal

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

2008 : Year for Design

Design Summit at Bangalore brought gathering of huge local as well international designers to catch up ...some to share knowledge some goods..each had their own pick.
http://www.designsummit.in/introduction.html

Lot of us missed many session due to break-out session..I am some how not convinced of the idea especially in Design domain because at end of the day one always feels the other session must have been better....from delegate point of view...one ends up seeing most crowd in one session remaining sessions seems like bus stand people getting in and getting out...

Any way "Star" session was that of Kishore Biyani's Interaction with Bruce and Uday...very thought provoking,impromptu and had straight from heart talk...from business man's point of view...

Here is link to Sir George Cox ...
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/cox_review/coxreview_index.cfm

It addresses :
eorge Cox, Chairman of the Design Council, will report, by the 2005 pre-Budget Report, on how best to enhance UK business productivity by drawing on our world-leading creative capabilities.

The review will address two specific issues:

  • Firstly it will identify how best to strengthen the relationship between businesses - particularly SMEs - and creative professionals drawn from a range of design, arts and related disciplines. These will include the potential impact on business performance of, among other things, digital media, product and industrial design, the arts and culture, graphics, branding and advertising, publishing, packaging, as well as interior and retail design. Within this, the review will have a particular focus on the role of creativity in modern manufacturing.
  • Secondly, the review will look at strengthening the links across university departments and with industry. This will include new forms of courses, services and alliances involving, amongst others, art, design and creative courses, business schools and engineering and technology courses.

The review will propose specific action in both of these areas, for Government, businesses and other institutions, with the objective of raising UK productivity.