Design firms zero in on product development
Indian design firms these days are re-engineering themselves from industrial and product designing (broadly CAD/CAM functions) to more critical functions like product development services.
By Writankar Mukherjee, TNN |
KOLKATA: Indian design firms these days are re-engineering themselves from industrial and product designing (broadly CAD/CAM functions) to more critical functions like product development services.
Their objective is to tap global outsourcing opportunities in areas like product idea evolution, product engineering and product innovation.
The estimated Rs 100-crore domestic design market, which is growing at 30% every year, is poised to grow faster with a flurry of outsourced product development projects coming to India. A bunch of top design firms like Axiom Consulting, Elephant Design, Idiom, Desmania Design and Onio are exploring opportunities.
“Design firms are evolving themselves to provide services across the entire product development chain — consumer studies, concept designing, R&D, ergonomics and final product usability studies. Hence, even Indian companies are now considering working with us to deliver better products,” said Satya Rao, CEO of Axiom Consulting.
But the magnitude of work from the domestic market is low since new products coming out of Indian companies are more of an annual or biennial event. Much of the recent surge in design work is due to the outsourcing phenomenon, wherein OEMs and SMEs across Europe and US are off-shoring their product development related work to India.
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Indian design firms are relying on their cost competitive advantage compared to western counterparts. “The Indian design market may be at a nascent stage, but we can do the entire process from concept to launch stage at one-fourth of the global cost,” said Shantanu Saha, CEO, and Idiom Design & Consulting.Here are examples of products commercialised after being designed by Indian firms. Axiom, for instance, has developed ‘PlayGear Visor’, a transparent polycarbonate visor for the Sony Playstation Portable, which is now selling in the US. Onio had designed a multi-media kiosk for Zip Global Network.
And Desmania has developed the ‘Sensation’ range of washing machines for Whirlpool and is now working with the likes of Carrier and P&G.
“Several of the MNCs who are customising India-specific products are also coming to design firms to understand consumer sensibilities. We conduct several studies to find out the latent and emotional need of consumers which can then be incorporated as product feature,” said Anuj Prasad, CEO and principal designer, Desmania Design.
Indian design firms are also looking to set up an overseas presence to bag a larger slice of the product development outsourcing opportunity. Desmania, for instance, is in the process of appointing associates in certain foreign markets.
“Axiom is also planning to have a representative office in Singapore, where some of the European design houses operate,” said Mr Rao.
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