Suresh is the Vice President, Whirlpool Design, Asia and member of global design management team. In this role he leads total design portfolio for Food Stream Solutions, Fabric Care, Air, Water and Cooking. He spends equal time in China and India where the Whirlpool Asian Design offices are located. . Suresh Sethi has built a unique and extensive track record in design, innovation and brand leadership. He works consistently to align creative process with business, and for him key to innovation lies in consumer brand experience.

Suresh believes that beauty creates desire and designers are critical in the creative economy

Sonia Manchanda is the cofounder and Principal Designer of Idiom, an integrated design practice, and creative chief and cofounder of DREAM:IN, a global initiative and venture that has been recognized as one of 6 global gamechangers by Metropolis magazine and received CII Design Excellence award for website design, besides being the winner in overall category for Interaction Design.

Sonia has been invited to showcase DREAM:IN at Curitiba, Brazil, at Designing for Billions at Parsons NY, at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven and several other prestigious forums.

Sonia is a design thinker and practitioner, deeply involved with developing businesses, brands and experiences. Besides developing talent and actively spreading design as a way of thinking and doing things. She is a graduate of National Institute of design, Ahmedabad and has trained in visual communication, design, filmmaking and photography.

DREAM:IN proposes a shift in focus of design from needs to dreams and has partners and practitioners amongst Universities, design academicians and students, thought and business leaders and has been replicated in Brazil and China. Most recently, finding a place for itself in Bruce Nussbaum's new book, Creative Intelligence.

Idiom has worked extensively in emerging sectors like education, retail and healthcare, closely with Indian entrepreneurs and also on global assignments. Besides developing many resilient businesses and brands, Sonia and Idiom have championed one of India's first Public Private Partnership movements for change in a global Indian city and the design and look of the 19th Commonwealth Games.

Shashank Mehta is a principal faculty of Industrial Design at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. Currently, he is the Activity Chairperson of the Institute's Faculty Development Programme. He is also the member of NID's Policy and Planning Committee.

Shashank is also the project head of the Design Clinic Scheme for MSMEs, a unique and ambitious design intervention scheme for the country's large MSME sector. Supported by the Ministry of MSMEs, Government of India, with the total project outlay of Rs. 73.4 crore the scheme targets to reach out to 200 MSME clusters through organization of Design Sensitization Seminars, Design Awareness Programmes and Design Projects.

A qualified mechanical engineer and product designer, Shashank has also added to his professional expertise by working as an engineer, designer and production in-charge with small and large scale industries and the craft and social sectors as well. He has worked on several projects, ranging from consumer products, medical equipment, furniture & Interiors, public utility, to grassroots innovations. Shashank has worked with the industries as designer, design consultant and also as consultant retainer. All this, coupled with sharp business acumen, he acquired that much needed holistic understanding of integrating user aspirations with industry constraints and demands, thus introducing viable design solutions.

Over the years Shashank has taught at the Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels, spanning various design disciplines. He has spearheaded the introduction of new course modules, that are in sync with the rapidly changing demands and aspirations of the industry and economy in general. Shashank has extensively worked in the area of technology and design fusion, sustainability and indigenous innovations. He has authored various articles and research papers and has widely lectured on these subjects. He was involved in conceptualising the first e-learning module on package design and also helped set up the country's first Design Business Incubator at NID. Shashank anchored international workshops with the specific focus on 'design for development' for the participants from various developing countries. In 2005, Shashank organized and co-anchored the first of its kind International conference on Design education in Asia - Design Education: Tradition and Modernity, DETM05. Besides being actively involved in imparting design education at NID, Shashank has held several important administrative positions at the Institute. He also serves as the member of various advisory committees and review committees for various international conferences.

Ranjan has led and facilitated innovation initiatives in a large number of organizations across countries. Organisations like Apple, Areva, APC, Bausch & Lomb, Bayer, Cable & Wireless, Glaxo SmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Honeywell, Microsoft, Mahindra Auto, Max New York Life, Novartis, Pepsico, Perfetti, Tata, Unilever and Whirlpool.

He has created innovation methodologies, frameworks and tools. Some of which are: the innovation evaluation architecture (used in the Forbes Applied Innovation Awards and Innovation for India Awards) and the 3C Spot-Fund-Nurture model used by NABARD in the area of Rural Innovation

As an innovation speaker, Ranjan is sought for his unique ability to pick unobvious insights, 'connect unusual dots' and present a compelling message in his characteristic spontaneous style. He delivers high-energy and insightful innovation keynotes, methodology sessions and also chairs conferences.

He has spoken at diverse forums like the European Conference on Creativity and Innovation - Warsaw and Copenhagen, Front End of Innovation - Amsterdam, American Creativity Association Conference - Singapore, Strategic Innovation Forum - Barcelona, The India Innovation Summit, National Brand Summit - AIMA, Asia HRD Congress, TEDx, The TiE World Summit, Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) and Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai (IIT)

Prior to his work in innovation, Ranjan spent a decade in advertising and marketing with organizations like J Walter Thompson (JWT), Lintas and Bharti. He is based in Bangalore, India

Raman is a graduate of National Institute of Design Ahmedabad, India (AEP -PD '96) with 20+ years of strong design, technical & business experience with an impressive track record of enriching hands-on experience in the field of Design Research, Interaction Design, User Experience Design, Industrial Design, Design Management, & Creative process management in a wide range of organizations including CA Technologies (formerly Computer Associates) SIEMENS, NOKIA, Human Factors International, Network Programs in International and multicultural environments in US, Europe, China and India.

Out of passion as UX evangelist, he initiated "USID" (Universal, Sustainable, Innovative Design for social change -www.usidfoundation.org) a forum of Design professionals to evangelize the design and its value to business profitability and socio-economic development in 2006. Since then he has been regularly organizing India's first ever 3 days design conference and many other events including as "Design Challenges" and "USID Gurukul- a collaborative and immersive learning experience" workshop.

A strong believer that the deep dive into the user context and environment is the key to creating any successful products that are useful, usable, accessible, engaging, innovative, universal and profitable. His research interest include - Tangible Interfaces, Mobile computing, Persuasive Design, Human Interaction Technologies, Social Computing, Enterprize2.0 & Healthcare.

Raman is currently a co-founder of USER Lab Asia (www.userlabasia.com), a design & innovation consulting and also a visiting faculty at Design programme of IIT Kanpur.

Parag Kulkarni is Senior Vice President & Business Head - Commercial Lighting & Furniture Business, Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting Group.

Parag joined Wipro in 1993 in the Sales function of Wipro Lighting. Prior to this, Parag worked with SKF Bearings (I) Ltd, where he began his career, and later with Atlas Copco (I) Ltd.

In 1999, he was appointed as Marketing Head of Wipro Lighting's C&I Business. In his new role, he contributed significantly to the Strategy and Positioning of the Lighting Business from an Industrial Lighting company to 'Leader in Indoor Lighting'.

Parag ideated of diversifying into Furniture Business and was entrusted with the responsibility of heading the newly formed 'Wipro Furniture Business' in 2004. In a short span, Wipro Furniture Business has become the 'Fastest Growing Furniture Company' in India, logging in high growth on a consistent basis. Parag has nurtured a fine team of Furniture professionals with strong focus on "R&D and Design" and "Project Management". Parag completely believes in continuous innovation to create customer-centric products.

Wipro Lighting & Furniture Business work closely with leading International designers such Tim Wallace - London, Eric Chan - New York , Conrad Marini - Toronto , Claudio Bellini - Milan and Michel Tortel - Paris for bringing forth International Class products for Indian market. Products from Wipro Lighting & Furniture have won many Indian and International awards. The products also have accreditions on Green from Leading International laboratories.

Parag also took over the reins of the Commercial Lighting Business from 2009 He guided the business to venture into "LED lighting". Under his stewardship, Wipro acquired "Cleanray , India's most promising LED startup based out of Bangalore. Wipro lighting is known for its leadership in 'Indoor LED lighting" space.

Parag has been awarded as among "50 Most Talented CMOs of India" by the CMO Council. He is also an active Member of "India CEO Forum". He is also on the advisory council for the "World Brand Congress". An avid jogger he is a regular at the Bangalore and Mumbai marathons.

Mahendra chauhan is currently heading the watch design team for brand Titan.He is a Product Designer from NID Ahmedabad and architect from NIT Raipur. He has been working fror more than 14 years designing consumer durable and life style products. His work has been produced in many countries and he has won many presigious national and international award in product design. More recently he has been awarded red dot design award for designing world's slimmest watch for Titan 'edge'.

His works have been published in leading international books and design websites.His work is displayed at red dot design museum in essen and singapore.He had also won rado design excellence award and design boom award for innovative product concepts.Apart from designing lifestyle products, he has designed interiors, residences and bicycles for BSA and hercules brand.He also talk at the CII Design Summit, and other conferences & Seminars on Design Thinking.

Mahendra is playing a very strategic role in defining Titan'S watch design stratgey by leading and managing complete watch portfolio of brand Titan, nebula, raga, Zoop and xylys.He spearheads the team with a very positive attitude and belives that design diffrention can only happen if we understand the consumers. He Belives, ''design begins with sensitivity , curiosity and passion. To excel in any field one needs to be passionate about it; sensitive to the end users and curious about the new things''.

Balkrishna Mahajan is the Director of Ticket Design Pvt. Ltd, an award winning design and innovation consulting company involved in product, packaging and user experience design. He is an Industrial Design graduate from National Institute of Design.

In 1990 he quit architecture after studying for a year at Pune and moved to Ahmedabad to pursue a design education at the premier National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. After his graduation he worked with Phil Corporation, Goa designing photographic equipment and cameras for Phil as well as Polaroid. He had the opportunity to work with MIT Media Lab, USA team to create a series of wearable wireless products that featured in the TIME magazine as the top twenty products of the future.

In order to explore a diversity of work he turned design entrepreneur along with Nishma Pandit to setup Ticket Design, a design and innovation company based in Pune in early 2000.Created and led design teams to create innovative, value added business solutions through meaningful product design for startups, small, medium and large enterprises.

He has been serving as a Director of Ticket Design, successfully leading strategic product design development for various Indian and multinational companies over the last 13 + years. Currently he leads Design Strategy and Business Development at Ticket.

With a belief that design thinking and design sensitivity is crucial for economic prosperity in most development sectors, he tried to be actively involved in promoting design awareness and in the process trained more than 800 professionals for innovation and design thinking. He also engages as a jury member and advisor with various design institutes.

Some significant accolades to his credit are the Red Dot Award 203, CII Design Excellence Award 2013, IDSA Industrial Designers Society of America, Packaging Award, Finalist 2011, Indiastar National Packaging Design Award 2010, Future Group Business World NID Design Brilliance Award 2008, International Appliance Design Silver Award USA 2007, Outstanding Contribution to Innovation - Whirlpool 2007, Business World NID Design Excellence Award 2006, International Young Design Entrepreneur of the Year (IYDEY) Award 2007 India Top 5.

He is the president of Association of Designers of India, Pune Chapter, 2012 and founder Member of Pune Design Festival, Member- IDSA Industrial Designers Society of America.

A graduate of India's premier design institute, National Institute of Design (NID) India, Satish and his firm Design Directions Pvt Ltd founded in 1988 by him and his better half - Falguni - also a graduate of NID Ahmedabad - combines design, technology, aesthetics and relevant materials to create a major impact on industrial, medical, electronic and consumer products. Design Direction's focus is on brand strategy, industrial design, visual communication and user interface design.

Satish is a recipient of several local and international awards. Just to name one- he is the recipient of the Design of the Decade Award for a low cost water filter designed for the Tata Group, instituted by the Industrial Designers Society of America.

Satish has been a jury member on several design award committees - local and overseas. He is a founder member of the Association of Designers of India (ADI and is a past member of the India Design Council (IDC). He is also a member of Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) committee on design. He is currently the Chairman of the design committee at the Mahratta Chamber of Industries of Commerce and Agriculture. He has been invited to speak at many National & International Design conferences.

Through his work, Satish has been able to raise a great level of awareness towards design in hard-core engineering sectors and prove to them by sheer market success, the importance and benefits of industrial design. He has till date, successfully designed and launched over 650 products in the Indian and international markets for a host of clients, ranging from the small scale sector to the heavy industry sector.

Some of Satish's products are sold in over 40 countries. He holds many patents and design registrations, most of which have been licensed.

Masahiro Inoue was born in 1956, and graduated from the Department of Industrial Design of Chiba University in 1979. From 1979 he started professional career at Toshiba Design Center as a product designer of home appliances and heavy apparatus.

After studied product design and finished master course at Domus Academy in Milan, Italy between 1987 and 1988, he came back to Toshiba Design Center as a product designer of social infrastructure.

He got a lot of Good Design Awards during 1983 to 1991. And from 1991 he worked for Toshiba Lifestyle institute as a researcher and a manager, analyzed customer's needs and future lifestyle and created vision statements for business unit.

In 1996 he moved to Singapore for design localization in Asian countries. As a general manager of Toshiba Singapore Design Center, he was in charge of consumer electronics products design like TV and VCR for Asian market.

From 2001 to 2005, he conducted marketing team in Toshiba America Consumer Products, LCC. in New Jersey, Unite States as a design director for 4 years.

After coming back to Toshiba Design Center in Tokyo, he was in charge of the design strategy of Toshiba Design as a group manager in 2005, and design management group as a senior manager from 2008.

Between 2010 and 2012, he conducted Toshiba Design Center as a general manager. He totally managed the design of Toshiba products and services for global market and got a lot of design awards including Good Design Gold Award in 2011.

He hold lectures and workshops on the design thinking for FTI (The Federation of Thai Industry) in Bangkok, on the design management course at Kyoto Institute of Technology and Shonan Institute of Technology in Japan during that period.

Since 2013 he has started a new career as a professor of architecture and design department at Nagoya Institute of Technology. He has been teaching the product design and the design management in the graduate school of engineering and taught the design thinking at Zhejiang University in China too.

Hideichi Misono is presently the Advisor at Tecno Art Research Co., Ltd., Japan. He is the Visiting professor, Division of Design Science, Graduate School of Engineering, Chiba University, Board Member, Japan Industrial Designers' Association (JIDA), Guest Professor, School of Automotive Studies, Tongji University, China and Good Design Fellow, at Japan Institute of Design Promotion (JDP).

After working on various projects at Toyota - including the post of Executive Vice President of the Calty studio in California, Hideichi Misono headed the company's luxury lines, including Lexus. From 2001, as Senior General Manager of the Design Center, Misono supervised all Toyota design and was instrumental in establishing Toyota's design philosophy. In 2004, he was positioned President & CEO of Tecno Art Research, an affiliate of Toyota's design group.

Anjan heads CII's works in the areas of knowledge that consists of Science & Technology, Industrial R&D, Innovation, Intellectual Property Rights, Design, Higher Education including Industry-Academia Partnerships, Emerging technology areas and Defence and Aerospace towards building strong innovation ecosystem in the country.

Has over twenty nine years of experience working in industry, government and CII, in the areas of Technology Development, Technology Assessment, Technology Transfer, International Technology collaborations, Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation, R&D Fund management, Project Engineering & Management, Consulting Engineering Services and Public-Private-Partnership Projects with Government and Academia / R&D Institutions.

Before joining CII, Anjan worked with CMC Limited, Mumbai; Ministry of Science & Technology, Govt. of India, New Delhi; Hindustan Motors Limited, Kolkata.

Has been responsible for technology development and commercialization of Municipal Solid Waste processing technology in India.

Works in collaboration with Industry, Government, Academia, International agencies with an objective to facilitate Indian Industry's increased focus in Innovation, R&D, design and generation of Intellectual Property.

Led creation and operationalisation of a few successful Public-Private-Partnership based Institutionalized Delivery Mechanisms.

Provided advisory services to many industries in technology areas. Consultant to World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). National Expert of UNIDO. Member in various Govt committees.

Anjan has Post Graduate (M. Tech.) degree in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur.

Firm believer in delivering impactful design solutions, Chandrashekhar (Shekhar) Badve is one of the founding directors of Lokusdesign, a leading brand consulting & packaging design organization. At Lokusdesign, he is responsible for driving the corporate strategy and marketing operations including organizational growth and lead design strategy advisory for its key clients. He strives to deliver impact to the design consultancy's client partners to innovate, transform, and grow using design as a tool of competition advantage.

Bringing more than a decade of rich experience in strategic design consulting, design innovation, and design research, he has provided design solutions to brands across a wide spectrum of industries. He has worked across a range of sectors including FMCG, Healthcare & Wellness, Pharmaceuticals, Engineering, Automotive, Banking, Travel & Telecom with notable brand engagements including ITC, Smirnoff, Mahindra Two Wheelers, Smirnoff, Cadbury, Nestle, Dabur, Raymond, Havells, Suzlon, Pidilite Inds, Honeywell, Rado Watch Co, Bilcare, HUL, Cox & Kings, Sharp, British Petroleum, Bombay Dyeing, BPCL, etc.

Apart from Lokusdesign, Shekhar has been a member of CII's MSME & Education sub - committee. He has been invited to speak on a variety of topics such as business design, strategic innovation, SME Growth & Sustainability, and innovative packaging design. Being passionate about grooming the next generation of design and communication professionals, he is a guest lecturer at premier communication & design institutes across the country including NID, SP Jain, Symbiosis, Welingkar, NIFT, amongst others.

Shekhar is a postgraduate from the prestigious National Institute of Design(NID), Ahmedabad.

Studied architecture from BKPS College of Architecture, Pune, in 1971 and further completed postgraduate studies in furniture design – from National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.

Shrikant Nivasarkar is a principle architect of design consultancy organization “Nivasarkar Consultants”, established in Pune in 1978. He has overseen the growth of the practice from small & medium scale residential design to larger scale commercial, institutional and industrial projects.

Shrikant has a nation wide reputation as a designer closely connect to his roots. The result is a design that has a sense of place and highly experiential in nature. In 2009 he was invited to participate in a specially curated exhibition at Helsinki “ called Ecologycal Chair”, amongst 20 top designers around the world.

Apart from an extensive career spanning more than three decades, Shrikant is associated with various educational and professional associations in different capacities. He has been a member of the governing council of national institute of design between 2009-2011.

Currently he is a member of the governing council of College of Architecture- Trivandrum, Rachana Sansad- Mumbai, Member of the Board of Studies of School of Interior Design-CEPT University, member of the academic council of MIT School of Design, Pune and College of Architecture-Navarachana University- Vadodara. He is also a chairman of ad hoc board of studies of design of Pune University.

He has traveled widely around the world and lectured at various design forums and educational institutes. He has also been invited on various national and international competitions and awards as a member of the jury.

In the past he has been first Indian president of International Federation of Interior Architects (IFI) – a global apex body of the profession of interior design- during 2007-2009, of which he was earlier the executive board member during 2001-1007, and also been executive board member of international design alliance (2007-2009), President of Indian Institute of Interior Designers (IIID)- (2004-2006). Currently he is the member of India Design Council and the President of Pune Construction Engineering Research Foundation.

B Bhaumik is a Mechanical Engineer followed by Post Graduate in Industrial Design from Industrial Design Center, IIT, Mumbai in 1972.  He belongs to one of the first batches of Industrial Designers in India. He has experience in the field of automotive styling, design, engineering and implementation spanning 40 years. He pioneered Automotive Styling at OEMs in India.

He has worked with a number of OE manufacturers, namely TELCO (now Tata Motors), Bajaj Auto, Kinetic Engineering and Mahindra & Mahindra.

His work includes styling, engineering and implementation of a range of Tata Trucks (Tata1516, Tata1210), Tatamobile Series of Vehicles, Bajaj Spirit, Bajaj Legend, Bajaj Saphire, Bajaj Chetak 4S, Mahindra Scorpio, Mahindra Xylo, Mahindra Genio, Mahindra Maxximo, etc.

His latest assignment has been piloting the Mahindra XUV5oo Project right from conceptualization to successful implementation.

At MAHINDRA & MAHINDRA LTD, he retired as Senior Vice President & Head of Product Development, Auto Division, on 31st March 2012. He was responsible for Styling, Engineering and implementation of all new as well as current vehicles in the Automotive Sector of M&M.

He is now working with Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd as Advisor, and is engaged in the area of Capability Development for Engineers engaged in Product Development.

Mr. Bhaumik has been involved with education of Industrial Design in India for over 30 years and has been in the Styling Committee of CII since its inception. He is also a member of first India Design Council.

Ashish is a graduate in Industrial Design from the National Institute of Design, Ahmadabad, India.
He started his design entrepreneurship, 23 years ago, by co-founding one of India pioneering design practices. Today he continues at Elephant Strategy + Design, an innovative multi-disciplinary design practice, ranked amongst the top 3 design consultancies in India by Brand Equity, Economic Times.
 
Ashish leads the Product & Retail Innovation group at Elephant but believes that design must not be narrowed into disciplines. He is known for his design work on evaporative air coolers, kitchen appliances, Medical diagnostic equipment and the award winning mechanical charger. He and his team at Elephant Design believe that the true merit of a project lies in its business success.

Ashish regularly conducts workshops on E4G business tool, Product Innovation Process and is a co creator of the design tool “ Psycho Experience Process ”. He is actively involved in supporting and promoting the Association of Designers of India.

Vasant Dewaji graduated from the national institute of design in 1992, after completing his engineering. He has worked for over 20 years in area of consumer design in the product and retail space across categories like travel goods and accessories, elevators, watches, white goods and bicycles.
He currently manages design and development at VIP Industries Ltd. He also takes out time each year to teach at design schools in India.

Abhijit Bansod, a National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad postgraduate, has been part of the new age design movement in India. After decade long experience with Titan Design Studio, he founded Studio ABD in 2008 to create an open platform to discover new facets of contemporary Indian Design.

Abhijit believes in celebrating creativity that combines fragments of Indian tradition with cutting-edge technology, and fuses cultural motifs and new age thinking. They conjure up sophisticated products that resonate with India’s rich past. Propelled by   humour, craft, rituals, people, situations and heritage of India, he creates products that speak a unique language- an Indian design vocabulary.

Dedicated to creating a whole and sustainable design experience for the users, Studio ABD focuses on fine-tuning details and expressing design all the way from product to packaging.  Studio ABD’s portfolio includes designing consumer products, packaging, branding, spaces and luxury experiences through lifestyle products. Studio ABDs work has won more than twenty national and international design awards including the Young Creative Entrepreneur (YCE) 2011 by British Council UK, RED DOT DESIGN AWARD 2010, Germany and Designer of the year Award, India in 2008.

Chetan Sorab is currently the head of design for home electronic products at LG Electronics India Pvt. ltd. He is an industrial designer with 13 years of rich industry experience in automotive and electronic industries. He graduated in mechanical engineering and went on to do his post graduation in Product Design from the prestigious National Institute of Design.

He has been consistently delivering successful products under the LG brand with strategic inputs in new product development and design innovation. He is also a jury member and faculty for some of the leading design schools in India. His interests are in strategic design and design for emerging markets.He has won many national and international awards, some of the accolades to his credit are Opus-Award, Elle Decor International Award, Red Dot award and Seoul International Award.

Charudatta is an Industrial designer, Innovator with over 10 years of experience across the Healthcare and Consumer industries. He is passionate about emerging markets, exploring unmet needs and deliver marker appropriate solutions.

After completing M.Des from IIT-Delhi, he worked in UK with a design consultancy firm Optima Design Services Ltd. for some time before he joined Johnson & Johnson in 2006. Currently he manages a team of "insights and innovation" responsible to deliver market appropriate solutions addressing the unique unmet needs in the emerging markets with focus on India & China.

He has a strong understanding and a deep interest in business aspects of the new products and services. He has contributed to critical business model innovations. He represents R&D in a cross-functional Pipeline Enrichment/Business Development teams to build value propositions and business case around various market appropriate opportunities for emerging markets.

He holds many global patents in the area medical devices and consumer products and has been awarded J&J Innovation Award for 2007-08 and 2011-12.

Ajay Tank is currently a Senior Design Consultant at Usha Shriram Enterprises and also runs his independent Design Studio offering design services to other clients.

He has almost 20 years of experience in design of Consumer Durables such as Home Appliances, Water Purifiers, Fans and Kitchen products.

After completing his Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engg. , he did his post graduation from National Institute of Design (NID) Ahmedabad in Product Design in 1994. Since then, he has designed several products for Usha Shriram which have been successfully launched in the Indian market and have also been exported to many countries. Products designed by him have become benchmarks in the appliance industry. He has designed the first table top storage water purifier for the Indian market in technical collaboration with a German company, which won the Golden Peacock award for "Most Innovative Product" in 1999.

Ajay has interest in other fields of design such as furniture design, space design and automobile design. He has always worked on promoting use of design in the corporate sector.

Ravi Mokashi Punekar is Professor at the Department of Design, IIT Guwahati.After completing a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Karnataka University, Dharwad, he went on to complete his Masters in Industrial Design from IDC, IIT Bombay and PhD in Design from IIT Guwahati.

After an early stint working as Product Designer in industry, he joined the National Institute of Design in 1986 and went on to head the Faculty of Industrial Design. In the year 2001, he left NID, to actively contribute in setting up the Department of Design at IIT Guwahati. In the span of these 28 years of his experience he has been actively engaged in Design education, Design Research and Product Design and Development activities. His fields of interest include Design pedagogy, Form Studies, Product Design and Development, Design Methods, Studies in Material Culture and Society, Design and Sustainability and Design Management.

In addition he has held senior administrative positions at IIT Guwahati as Associate Dean (Student Affairs') 2002-05; and Head of the Department of Design 2005-09.

Always a keen sportsman, he continues to enjoy a good game of cricket and table tennis, and makes up for lack of extended play due to health restriction, by his alternate interest in listening to Hindustani music.

PAUL SANDIP, an electrical engineer / post-graduate of Product design from the National Institute of Design, (NID) Ahmedabad, is the founder of PAUL STUDIO, India.

He is known for his simplicity with which he beautifully combine latent needs of consumers with appropriate technology to create highly differentiated products to fuel business growth. Paul specializes in Product Innovation through Consumer Insight & Strategy, Creative Engineering, Styling and Colour/Material Trends. He has designed over 100 products in the last 10 years, many of which have become Iconic Best Sellers. The objects designed ranged from Electrical Accessories, Home Appliances, Lighting, Furniture, Kitchenware, Tableware, Children/Baby products, Toys, Stationary, Bath accessories to Footwear.

Paul had also been actively involved in New Product Developments with LG Electronics, India & Seoul for nine years where he worked on several experimental as well as Indian insights driven projects, which had both global as well as local appeal and business sense.

Winner of Red Dot Award (twice!), Young Talent at Elle Decor International Award and numerous other domestic / international awards his work has been extensively published and exhibited internationally including the Triennale Museum in Milan, Ambiente Fair in Frankfurt, Red Dot Award Show in Singapore, Avenue of Stars in Hong Kong, Lite-On Awards Show in Taiwan, Design Korea Exhibition/Design Olympiad in Seoul and Alliance Francaise in Delhi.

He was Honoured as a DESIGNPRENEUR by Chief Minister of Gujarat, Shri Narendra Modi in 2004 as well as awarded with Business World Design Excellence Award for his Disposable Toilet Mug for Indian Railways. The Mug was a finalist at INDEX Award in Denmark and now held in the permanent collections of the Danish Design Museum in Copenhagen, as an example of Design to improve life!

Design professional with proven leadership mettle in Industrial Design with reputed organizations. 14+ years of rich hands on experience in product and packaging design, visual communication design, branding, Product portfolio management, brand visual architecture, graphic design and strategic design with a portfolio of high profile projects for India's leading brands. Having Experience of establishing full-fledged design studio and building strong team of design & engineering professionals to deliver best-in-class design solutions to key accounts in Mumbai. Proactive, creative, committed professional with an outstanding career of delivering superior results through effective communication, coordination, relationship building, strategizing, planning and execution.

As founder & director of Designlipi Projects Private Ltd, he initiated the 1st Professional Design House based out of Kolkata in entire eastern part of India offering services in Strategic Design, Branding & Communication, Product Design, Packaging Design and Design for Retail Experiences. Presently having a team of 6 and clients like ITC, Exide, Godrej Appliance, Godrej Locks, Godrej Construction, Godrej Natures Basket, Godrej PRIMA, Eveready Industries Ltd., Punjab Sind Dairy, Lightkraft etc. Won IDESIGN Award 2012 for designing innovative mosquito repellant device & applied for 1 patent in 2013 and having several design registrations.

Mr. Sushant Jena is the Vice President of Design and Development at T.I. Cycles of India, a unit of Tube Investments of India Ltd. He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering and Post-Graduation in Industrial Design from the National Institute of Design - Ahmedabad. Before Joining TI Cycles he has worked at Whirlpool Corporation as the design head for India Studio, National Institute of Design as Consulting Designer and AT Design Company Japan as a Designer.

He has a varied professional experience ranging from leading design team for an MNC to education & consulting in the field of appliances, automobile, education and entertainment. He has rich experience in leading design for Product as well as Brand Design strategy through strong embedded processes.His designs have won a lot of international awards like Good Design, Sparks Design, IF Design, Product of the Year, etc.Several of his designs arepatented for design innovations.

Other than Core area of design he has a lot of experience in processes development for business, he is a mentor for innovation and business processes. He is an invited speaker at Universities, conferences & events on the subject of Design. He has also conducted several workshops for Schools and Universities on varied subjects ranging from social relevance to Design practices.

Abhijit studied at National Institute of Design, as a product designer is passionately focused on design for health+Wellbeing. His deep belief in Health+Innovations® that help products operate at a higher level as the most effective way to provide care and relief to patients across the globe has led him to innovate and design for over 10 years which transcends over various fields in Design. The design consultancy operates with a multidisciplinary strategic-creative group of designers, Strategist and engineers, supported by a variety of specialists.

Neodes, his design studio in Pune, India, is the recipient of the prestigious Medical Design Excellence GOLD award recently. His work has been cited in a range of prestigious journals such as Medical Device Design at Crossroads, MD + DI. He is actively involved in design promotion via design education as a visiting faculty, jury member for projects and as a project mentor at various design and engineering schools across India.

His mantra: Healthy Innovation is Healthy Business.

Anuj Prasad, 47, is an alumnus of NID. After completing his B.Tech in Production Engineering and working for 5 years in Manufacturing and Design Engineering, in the industry, he decided to move on to pursue his creative career at NID. He completed his Masters in Industrial Design in 1993 and thereafter worked with HCL for 3 years. In 1996 he started the ID division of Desmania.

Desmania is now a leading multi disciplinary design company in the country, offering professional design services across the industry segments. With its core expertise in product, packaging, graphic and retail design, Desmania now offers Strategic Design Solutions that give measured business success to the clients. Desmania is the recipient NID-BW Design Excellence award and several Indiastar awards for FMCG Packaging. It has been rated as a top design company in India by Businessweek (US). Desmania has diversified in the area of Toy and Automotive Design, with a large integrated design studio in NCR Delhi, with a unique clay modeling facility for full-scale cars models.

Anuj has been a leading voice of Design in the country. He has been a member of CII’s National Committee of Design for the last 3 years. Anuj has also been an advisor to the GOI on implementing the Design Scheme for the MSMEs. He has been a speaker at various design forums in India and is a highly respected professional in the field.

Desmania has full services offices in Delhi, Mumbai and Gurgaon. It has partnered with Italian, German and Korean companies to offer high quality, end-to-end design solutions.

Dipendra Baoni is an alumnus of Product Design from NID (National Institute of Design) and St Paul’s School, Darjeeling and is the Founder and Managing Director of Lemon Design.

A Design entrepreneur, Dipendra started Lemon immediately after his NID education and since then has been engaged in transforming Lemon from a graphic design studio to an awardwinning Integrated Design Consultancy - offering Strategy, Branding, Packaging, Retail & Space Design, UX & Interaction Design, Industrial Design and Mobile & Web Technology to its various clients in the public & private sector, both in India and Globally. Some of the clients include RBI, GJEPC, Hindustan Times, Reuters, Airtel, TVS Lucas, Bharat Forge, Park Avenue, Portico, Faasos, My Dentist amongst many others.

In 2006, Dipendra became Director of Bisquare Systems a NOIDA based Product Design & Development Firm to offer UI & UX Design & Industrial Design and has clients like Department of Post, DRDO (Wesee), Canon, Moser Baer amongst others.

In 2009 he co-founded a company called ECCO Electronics driven by Design & Technology convergence to create/identify unique marketplace opportunities that address real world problems and create compelling value propositions for users and stakeholders that are affordable, eco-friendly and efficient & sustainable. He is one of the Promoters of this company and looks after its Branding, Brand Strategy & Design and Product Strategy & Development.

He has won awards for his work from Audi International Design Competition. In 2010 he also won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities for the “Buddy Assistive Media Player” for the visually impaired from the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Government of India. In 2012 he won the CII-NID Design Excellence award for the “ECCODIVA” a Multi-purpose Solar Lamp for the coveted Overall Industrial Design Category, and the category of Electronics & Computers. Dipendra also teaches some courses at NID, DSK, MIT & SID, and is a jury member for diplomas offered to Student. He also talk at the CII Design Summit, and other conferences & Seminars on Design Thinking.

Elias is an alumni of the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. He joined TVS Motor Company in 1995 and worked as a motorcycle designer till 2000. He was actively involved in the in-house development of Spectra scooter, Shaolin and Victor motorcycle during that period. Since 2000 to 2004 he left TVS and worked as a senior UX designer in Planetasia.com and subsequently as founder and Head of Design at Axiom Consulting Bangalore specializing mainly in the field of transportation and product design. Since 2004 he rejoined TVS Motor as Head of Design for all business verticals, which included domestic India, ASEAN, 3Wheeler and International program requirements. The major model brands he has helped conceptualize and develop are Apache RTR, Scooty, Wego, Star series, Neo, Rockz, Tormax and TVS King, which have found success in domestic and international markets.

Narendra Ghate is a Chief Designer at Tata Elxsi. He has interest in economics, design thinking and strategy.  He has a solid mooring in mechanical engineering followed by Product design education from IDC, IIT Bombay. He has an added business flavor with an Executive MBA from IIM Bangalore. He started career in Product design with stints at Unilever Design, Seymour Powel and Fitch in UK. Moved to Automotive styling with Stints in GM (Detroit), Ford (Germany), PATAC (China), Nissan (Japan). Shifted focus to Branding, Graphics and Retail. All the above assignments were part of the long continuing career in Tata Elxsi. One of the founding members of the ID (Industrial Design) division of Tata Elxsi. ID@Tata Elxsi with over 250 staff (more than 70 Designers) is one of the largest design agencies in India with operations in the US, Europe and Japan. His current role focuses on Innovation Portfolio, Marketing and General Management.

He has conducted Innovation workshops for Key customers in US, UK and India. He has given talks and held workshops in various design schools in India. He has been a Jury member of IF awards and Tata Innovista.

Settled in Bangalore with wife Dhanashri and 7 year old son Aarush.

Paul Sandip is an award winning product designer/electrical engineer who re-defines everyday objects with his voluntary simplicity and eco-consciousness. He beautifully combines latent consumer's needs with technology to churn out highly differentiated products which become "Iconic Best Sellers".

He specializes in Product Innovation, Consumer Insight & Strategy, Color Trends, Styling and Creative Methods.

Paul initiated "Useful Art" a pursuit of excellence in turning daily-use products into desirable everyday objects by imagining and implementing creative methods and approaches to product design. The objects designed ranged from Electrical Accessories, Lighting, Furniture, Kitchenware, Tableware, Children/baby products, Toys, Stationary, Bath accessories to Footwear.

Useful Art has won several design awards including the most prestigious international recognition Red Dot Award in 2007& 2010. His work has been extensively published and exhibited internationally including the Triennale Museum in Milan, Ambiente Fair in Frankfurt, Red Dot Award Show in Singapore, Avenue of Stars in Hong Kong, Lite-On Awards Show in Taiwan, Design Korea Exhibition/Design Olympiad in Seoul and Alliance Francaise in Delhi. His work is held in permanent collections of the Danish Design Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark as an example of Design to improve life!

Prakash is a Mechanical Engineering graduate from VJTI Mumbai and a Product Designer from NID He heads Onio team for Product design and Product innovation assignments at Onio. He leads complex product innovation projects using proprietary methods of Creative Engineering and Technology Productization. He is primarily active in the areas of Consumer Appliances, Automotive & Hi-Tech applications of design. He has been instrumental in winning several awards for Onio, through the products he designed.

He has developed a network of product development partners and suppliers across India. He speaks on several forums related to innovation in SMEs, Design Engineering & User centered development. He also mentors many inventors and startups on Product Innovation.

He is a founder member of Association of Designers of India.

V. Ega is the Associate Vice President and Design Head at Godrej Interio. He has a M. Tech in Production (Mechanical Engineering) from I.I.T Mumbai and a B. Tech (Mechanical Engineering) from Sri Venkateshwara University, Tirupati.

His experience of 20 years in engineering design, technology adoption and product design at Godrej Interio has helped the brand in networking and collaboration of people from various functions to constantly evolve and develop furniture as a complete experience design.
He enjoys managing, motivating and building passionate environments for industrial designers to create products that can shape the future of this business. He has shaped the design team at Godrej Interio to develop contemporary furniture as lifestyle products for the relevant target customers.

A mechanical engineer and a PG product design graduate from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, Vivek was highly inspired by his mentors to look at design differently as a tool to resolve issues of any complexity. Continuing with internship at Onio Design and Reva Electric Car Company he learnt the art of evaluating and selling design.

Soon, he chose to start his own business and today, runs a product design consultancy by his name in Mumbai. The vision of his company is, delivering design services to MSME sector industries. The base, for this consultancy stands strongly on an attitude to create meaningful change which will create a difference.

This fundamental proved correct when Vivek scored an honourable mention in the most coveted Red Dot Award – Product Design, 2012, for a very simple product – A Gas Sandwich Toaster. He firmly believes in imparting knowledge to the people he works with, to sensitize the audience and together give rise to a revolution that can bring about a change by design.