f e at u r e

A countrys history tells us a lot about its attitude towards design and its levels of prosperity.

Alpana Parida, President, DY Works

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The Value of Design in Developing Markets: An Indian Insight

by Alpana Parida

The latest design to hit Indian shores is the Indira Gandhi International Airport, Terminal 3, Delhi (Figures 1 and 2 on next page). Its well-planned and large, with tons of glass and steel, wall-to-wall carpets, and larger-thanlife installations. It is modern and efficientand it looks like any other airport in the world: JFK, CDG, or LHR. But anyone who has visited India knows of the dust and dirt in the

streets. With that scenariocarpets? The cleaning systems are rudimentaryand square foot after square foot of glass is difficult to keep clean. The glass surfaces have already begun to collect visible amounts of dust and dirt, and the new airport spends enormous resources on fighting this battle. And that is just the problem with some of the functional aspects. The visual design is another story altogether.

There could have been so many inspirations for an airport in India. The country boasts a rich tapestry of architecture and design history. There are references to flying machines in Indian mythology. And there are local materials that could have been used that are both friendly to the environment and more cost-efficient. Essentially, Terminal 3 represents a missed opportunity to create a truly Indian public space.
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Figures 1 and 2. Terminal 3, Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi.

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The Value of Design in Developing M arkets: An I ndian I nsight

India is a land of transposed design

This scenario seems to hold true for most developing nations. Progress, for them, seems to mean picking up designs from the developed nations and plunking them down in their new home with little thought or attention to local context (Figure 3). Why does this happen? Why has the power of design been consistently overlooked by developing nations in everything from airports to large hydro dams, from consumer products to malls, from clothing to automobiles? Most of the time, we see no more than a handful of local insights or solutions. In a country as hot and humid as

India, mens collars turn black and grimy every day. This is great for detergents, which sell by the proverbial ton thanks to their ability to clean collars; yet, in the shirt-wearing history of modern India, there is no record of any innovation on the collar. It is not that this is a nation of people who lack the intellectual capitalfar from it. Nor is this a nation that lacks the entrepreneurial spiritagain, far from it. Then why does design not enter into the Indian consideration?
The answer lies in history

The answer requires us to go back in history. In 1657, during the Elizabe-

than era in Great Britain, which was known for its spirit of scientific inquiry, the Western world was inventing the pendulum clock and discussing the principles of probability. In the India of that time, Aurangzeb, a particularly ruthless and regressive Mughal emperor, was ascending the throne. He took the country to a place in which devout Muslims were rewarded and austerity was celebrated. (The present-day Taliban follows the same tenets.) By 1757, when the spinning jenny was heralding the Industrial Revolution, changing the way people lived and worked and giving capital-

Figure 3. Transposed design from the West has made India a land of strange juxtapositions, where a shopping mall and a cow may share space without attracting much notice.

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ists their first taste of the profits to be enjoyed through industrial design, the seeds of belief in the power of design had been sown. In that same year, India fought and lost its first battle of independencethe Battle of Plasseyto the East India Company, which quickly established its rule. The ammunition and ships they brought helped them establish a stronghold in the country. And with that began the systematic plunder of Indias natural resources and the decimation of local enterprise, for even the most basic

superimposition of external sensibilities and aesthetics on the local population. Local enterprise had shriveled, and toeing an imperialist line became mandatory for survival. Indigenous design was completely absent. In another 100 yearsby 1857the zipper, the safety pin, the fax machine, fiber optics (yes, 1857!), and hydrogen fuel cells had all been invented, while India fought and lost the second battle of independencealso called the Sepoy Mutinydepending on which side of

transpose development into India. The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, was modeled after Harvard Business School. The architectLouis Kahndesigned what was perhaps his finest work, but with no consideration given to the Indian societal context. The building is tall and forbiddingnot the warm and inclusive architecture common to Indian spaces. The social context was missing. And it was missing in what was going on within the building, as well. Educating business managers in

While the fruits of design were becoming obvious to economies reaping the benefits of industrialization and trade through innovations in machinery and shipbuilding design, India was still subsisting through agriculture and mining.
commodities, such as salt and sugar, had to be imported. Local agriculture was converted to cultivation of cash crops, such as indigo and cotton, and famines abounded due to lack of food. While the fruits of design were becoming obvious to economies reaping the benefits of industrialization and trade through innovations in machinery and shipbuilding design, India was still subsisting through agriculture and mining. This was also an era in which imported fabrics from Manchester took over the local markets, and local weavers and craftsmen began losing their livelihoods. In other words, it was the beginning of a the Himalayas you came from. India was importing everything finished and designed and was exporting everything raw and unprocessed. Every bit of value addition was done outside the countryand the local population had never seen evidence of the economic benefits to be had in design. Everything indigenous was slowly lost. This state of affairs continued well into the middle of the twentieth century. After India gained independence, in 1947, the country tried to catch up with the rest of the world. The fastest way to do this was to India also required an understanding of social context. For instance, it is traditional for Indian sons to inherit family businesses, and they needed to be trained to run those businesses rather than trained as managers for multinational companies selling soaps and detergents to a well-segmented demographic! Similarly, the Indian Institute of Technology was modeled after MIT. And although medical schools were duly founded, any indigenous knowledge of medicine and science, to say nothing of the arts and crafts, was fading. The world had already experienced ICB missiles, space travel, nuclear energy, and

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The Value of Design in Developing M arkets: An I ndian I nsight

Figure 4. Bhatgar Dam, in Indias Maharashtra state.

computers, and India was in a hurry to stay abreast with the world. The same was true of importation of large infrastructure projects, such as hydro-engineering projects (Figure 4). There was never a search or a debate about local, or micro, solutions that maintained the local ecological balance and might become a source of livelihood and development rather than uproot the local population (Figure 5). In this historically challenged world of transposed development, the Indian entrepreneur never benefited from design thinking. The economic power of a new idea, service, or product that met local needs was generally not experienced. The multipurpose luggage that needed to become a

Figure 5. Rice farmer near Hampi village in northern Karnataka state.

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personal seat at the crowded railway station was never invented. This dependence on transposed thought extends to the word of branding, as well. Not only is the product design cut and pasted into its new environment without any consideration of context, but the brand, its positioning, and its packaging are placed out of context also. Local studies in semiotics, along with mining of deep cultural insights to understand implications for design and brand creation, are seldom practiced.
Helping international brands succeed in India

As Indias leading brand strategy and brand design firm, we push the enve-

lope (and our clients) toward semiotic thinking, contextualized in the local culture. We re-interpret global brands in a local context. In that context, consider this brief case study of Hersheys Chocolate Syrup, a product that had been positioned in India as it is in the US and the worldas a chocolate topping typically used on ice-cream. Anyone who knows India knows that the penetration of refrigerators with frost-free freezers is low. India is a land of freshly cooked food, three times a day, thanks to abundant and affordable household help; and freezers rarely contain anything other than ice and frozen peas. 95 percent of ice cream consumption occurs where it

is purchased and only 5 percent is consumed at home. The Hersheys Chocolate Syrup was talking to the consumer that owned a refrigerator. Who owned a refrigerator with a freezer with ice cream that was vanilla and liked chocolate sauce on it. No wonder the volumes were small! Working with Godrej HersheysHersheys Indian joint-venture partnerwe determined that the product needed to be repositioned as a solution to one of the biggest battles Indian mothers face, which is this: Indian mothers consider themselves better mothers if their kids get great grades, if they appear clean and well groomed, if they respect their elders in the family

Figure 6. In India, it made more sense to sell Hersheys syrup as an addition to milk rather than as a topping for ice cream.

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The Value of Design in Developing M arkets: An I ndian I nsight

and society and if they drink milk. And getting the kids to drink milk is a daily battle. Hersheys was repositioned as mothers aid in getting their kids to ask for milk. Our brief was clear. Make milk as mouth-watering as possible using Hersheys syrup (Figure 6). Our design ensured it did not challenge an iconic pack with international recognition, but instead complemented it with a removable sleeve that offered more surface area in which to communicate the new message. The effort to bring the new brand proposition alive led to a spike of more than 125 percent in a onemonth period (with more than 600 percent growth in one leading store), and an overall growth rate of 75 percent after the promotion period. The campaign won us an Innovation in Media award from New Yorks The Internationalist. Or consider our work in the Indian market for Mutti, the Italian tomato products company. The popularity of Italian food is growing rapidly in India. In less than 20 years, for instance, India has become the fastest-growing market outside the US for Dominos Pizzas. The chain has grown to more than 400 stores; it sells close to four million pizzas a month, or 400 pizzas per store per day. The chain

is particularly successful because rather than selling the same toppings as elsewhere, they are Indianized to include paneer, chicken tikka, extra jalapenos and, in some cases, even green chillies. But pasta sauces had remained a rather small part of the Indian market, and Mutti was all set to launch an international line there. We understand that international foods make it big in India only when they have understood the local palate and culture. For instance, Maggi Noodless Masala flavors constitute more than 85 percent of its Indian portfolio. Similarly for Lays chips

the Indian spice flavors make up more than 95 percent of that portfolio. Clearly, for Mutti, we needed to create a recipe with higher spice levels and more pronounced sweet and sour notes. But this was not all. As we studied the few international brands that had entered the market (which exhibited the same formats and formulations as used overseas), we noticed that the 400-gram glass jar was the most common SKU. However, our observations of Indian kitchens and processes told us that products stored in glass jars were always used by the spoon. No matter what the glass jar containedpickles or ghee, ketchup or jellyit only came out by the spoonful. There was no behavior in which a jar was overturned in the cooking. For this reason, we ensured a flexible pouch format for Mutti (Figure 7), as well as a jar. That product has now launched in India, and the flexible format outsells the jars two to one. It is my belief that a deep cultural connection is necessary for a successful brand and product design to exploit the markets potential to its fullest. The transposeddesign approach is an opportunity lost in a market as culturally rich and deep as India. n
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Figure 7. Indian cultural traditions made this pouch package a much better fit for pasta sauces.

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