Where there’s a wheel, there’s a way

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Tell us about your journey till now.
Coming off as an engineering graduate, I wouldn’t have started up on my own had it not been for design education. It was NID that gave me the confidence to do my own thing. At that time, jobs were hard to come by. I had an opportunity to go to IIT, Chicago. I even had a confirmation letter from them. But I didn’t want to go abroad. I wanted to stay back in India and do something for India.

This was in April ’94; just after NID. I started from an absolute zero; I had no business plan and no idea of how to go about things. But I said okay, let’s try out something and see how it goes. All I had was my passion to work with the automotive industry.

How did it go in the first year? What were the first projects that you worked on?
My first project was to develop a left hand drive dashboard for Eicher Motors. Back then, people at Eicher would get the drawing from Japan and make the product. But I started off without any drawing. I first did the conceptualization. Then I started making a model myself to use as reference for the cabin. Those days PU foam was not available and I worked with thermocole. And funnily enough everybody used to ask me “where is the drawing?” to which I would reply, “There is no drawing. Once I finalize the design, I will make the drawing”.

All in all, the first year was very tough. After struggling the whole year through, I earned just Rs. 36,000. And I am talking about ’94.

Why did Eicher Motors get to you? Why not somebody else?
My final year project was the electric bus for BHEL, for which I had to use an Eicher chassis. And even before, I had visited Eicher twice or thrice for my diploma project. So, I was acquainted with the people there and they knew that there is somebody called Vidyadhar Pande who knows the Eicher chassis. So they contacted me.

It was my first project that was successful. I say successful, because the design went into final production. About 25 vehicles were made and sold. That gave me immense confidence; confidence that I can survive on my own and that I need not join a firm to do a job.

From ’94 onwards, what are the milestones that Abhikalp Design has had?
From ’94 to ’97, I worked with a lot of companies but on small jobs like dashboards, interiors, small parts and aesthetics. My first milestone was in ’97, when I did a complete bus for Tata exports in Fiber Reinforced Plastics (FRP). It was the first bus in the country where the front and rear panels and dashboard were in composites. That model is still in production today, after 13 years, and Tata motors sells it in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.

The second milestone was in 2000 when I did a Heavy Commercial Vehicle (HCV) for Eicher. Till that time, Eicher was producing mostly small and Light Commercial Vehicles (LCVs). They launched this truck at the 2000 Auto Expo. I did the entire styling of the cabin for it. The total project was worth 140 crores. Considering the size of the project, the limited infrastructure that I had, and the fact that so many tools needed to be manufactured, I was under tremendous pressure. I knew that if anything went wrong, i was a goner.

Then 2000 onwards, I was able to generate some funds. I invested heavily on infrastructure and I started working more with the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). It was due to my engineering background that I could get funding from the bank. You see, banks normally don’t provide funding to designers easily.

The most recent milestone for Abhikalp has been the ‘LCV Bus of the Year 2009’ award. Our design for Eicher beat tough competition from Tata Marco Polo. I feel, that is one of the major achievements of my life because we not only did the styling but also a lot of engineering.

So is that how you differentiate yourself from your competitors?
The philosophy that I have been following post NID is, “I am an industrial designer and not a stylist”. That is, I design for mass manufacturing and I don’t do customized jobs. I am not an artist. I see myself more as a hardcore engineer, who has an understanding of industrial design. And to be frank, that is what most of the clients are looking for in India. If I were to do just styling work, it would be very difficult for my customers to take it into production.

So, we have built our network in such a way that we offer projects on turnkey basis to customers, where we handle the entire cycle end-to-end. Which means that right from the sketch to the final production, we take care of everything. For this we work with a lot of other companies. So in effect, we do not just styling but engineering coupled with styling. That is really our strength and it has given us the competitive advantage in the market.

So who are your competitors?
I feel, in today’s time, anybody can be a competitor. We target our customers right from the concept stage to the final production. And there are plenty of competitors at each stage. There are plenty of independent firms in India that do styling or prototyping or engineering analysis. So yes, there is tremendous competition.

There is competition also from the design firms of Europe, because they are now trying to get work in India. Also, most of the OEMs have their own design studios now.

However, our USP is that we have been dealing in the market for so many years and we offer the complete package. We have generated enough expertise in the bus and the truck market over 15 years and we have remained very competitive price-wise because we are in Indore. Sitting here at Indore, we provide a variety of services all over the country and outside the country also. Our operating cost is quite low as compared to a firm operating out of a big metro.

Besides the cost aspect, are there any other advantages of working in Indore?
Yes. For starters, I can devote most of my time to working, rather than traveling. Also, we don’t have to depend on anything from outside because we have everything available here. We have people from the auto cluster, who have the best pulling machines available in the country.

And what about people? Yours is a very people-centric business.
I am a Maharashtrian and Indore is largely a Maharashtrian city. The culture here is typically west Indian; a combination of Maharashtrians and Gujaratis, with some influence of the north and some from the south. People here are nice, they are not aggressive and they are little docile, say, as compared to Delhi. So it is great to work with them. And all my team is trained here. Most of the people working on CAD are locals. Only the designers usually come from outside. But on that front too, things are looking up, as there is a design institute that has come up here. Yes, HR wise, there are challenges but I am able to cope with them.

How large is Abhikalp now, in terms of people and revenue?
Revenue wise, we are a very small firm. Our design team has about 10-12 people and we operate out of two offices. We also have a workshop with around 25 people working on prototyping and the works. I don’t want Abhikalp to grow too fast too soon. We are working at it slow and steady.

We are focusing all our energies on automotive commercial vehicles, and not private vehicles. Rather, we don’t endorse designing personal vehicles. We work on commercial vehicles only. So recession has been quite bad for us. Especially the last two years have been really tough for the commercial vehicles sector. The whole industry was down by 60%. But, I am sure that in the next 3 months’ time, we will recover fully.

Can you tell us a little bit about the process that you follow when you design?
Our process varies quite a bit depending on the type of project that we are doing. But in general, our design process has four phases: concept, development, implementation and execution.

Concept phase typically includes getting the project brief from the customer, styling concepts, generating the form and validating the design. Our brief is actually more of a product specification statement, based on which do our design.

We kick-start the development phase with ‘package drawing’, that is, 2D drawings based on the product specification statement. Here, we also take all the information from the customer related to statutory requirements for the market for which we are designing. In this phase we do product refinement, ergonomic studies, testing and 3-d modeling.

In the implementation phase, we do the first time prototype development and simulation of the parts in CAD or in composites. Basically, it is a functional trial before going for the execution stage. The execution phase starts with the prototype development through soft pulling and ends with getting the data for hard pulling. Once the data is given for the hard pulling, the first production prototype or the pilot batch is produced.

Our design process is not a pure industrial design process. It is a combination of industrial design and engineering design. Our ultimate goal is to send out a product with zero errors to the customer.

Most designers that we talk to or know of are scared of engineering. And that is why a lot of these products don’t make it to the market. Do you think it is important for industrial designers to actually take their products to the market?
In India, the bifurcation of engineering design and industrial design has still not taken place completely. We are currently in the transition phase and till a clear-cut distinction happens between industrial design and engineering design, like there is in the Orient, clients will require engineering support also. That is a role industrial designers should be ready to play, at least for the next 5 years.

So according to you, for the next 5 years the industrial design firms and graduates from design schools must also do some engineering design.
I would say that you need not be an engineering graduate or an engineering design person. All you need are good networking and marketing skills. How you present yourself is more of business strategy than a design strategy.

So how do you find customers? Or how do customers find you?
We have been in this field since so many years and we have worked with most of the OEMs. So people know us. Sometimes a person leaves one company to join another and asks us to come onboard a project. It is all about customer relationships. We also participate in a lot of overseas exhibitions.

If you were to teach designers business acumen, what would you teach?
I will always teach them not to be like me. I am a very emotional person. To be a businessman, you need to be to be very aggressive. In my opinion, designers are not great businessmen, because designers are emotional people. So they have to learn business acumen.

Way back in ’93, a renowned businessman from Ahmedabad, who was a graduate from IIM-Ahmedabad, came to NID for a presentation. And he very rightly asked, “Why don’t designers come to business schools?” Today, I would say that a designer has to learn about business. If you have a business family, you could learn it from your family. If you are not from a business family, you could learn it from your friends or from a variety of avenues. It is not necessarily just a B-school that teaches you business management.

In my case, I had no background in business. My family is a typical Maharashtrian middle class family. So, there were no inputs from the family on that front. I learnt business acumen from my friends. And networking helped me a lot.

What is the biggest business mistake you have made?
The biggest mistake I made, which I don’t want others to follow, is that I made major investments on a hunch feeling without doing proper marketing. We got a lot of equipment even though we did not have many projects in hand. We suffered a setback for three years. But then as an entrepreneur, a lot many times you need to go with a hunch feeling. You need to take a risk to make things happen. But you need to do your homework.

JAM (just a minute…)

What is the best moment of the day?
When I go home and have lunch with my kids. That is a luxury I have because I am here in Indore.

If there were one person for whom you would like to design a thing, who is the person and what would you design?
I want to design a small car for my daughter. I used to make small car models since my fifth standard. But now it works against my philosophy of not designing any personal vehicle.

What is that one vehicle that you would have rather designed and not somebody else?
I love the form of three-wheelers. I have always wanted to design a three-wheeler. But these kinds of projects are not there in India.

One word that would define your designs/style?
My design represents the typical Maharashtrian ethos – not aggressive, but docile and soft.

As a designer, one thing that you would like to change in the present system?
The Public Transportation System in India. We are striving to do our bit in changing that. The Indore model of public transportation system that we pioneered has been adopted all over India now. The basic idea is to reduce the number of personal vehicles on the road by making public transport so easy and lucrative that people start preferring it to personal transport.

If you were a commercial vehicle, which vehicle would you be?
Definitely a bus.

Any role models?
I believe in the design process of Giugiaro, although he works only on personal vehicles. I learnt a lot from the design methodology he follows.

Which is your favorite vehicle?
Nano, though I don’t own one. I was unfortunately not one of those lucky 1 lakh people who got the car. I always buy Tata cars because I worked for Tata motors. See how the Koreans and the Japanese developed their own companies by buying only Korean or Japanese cars. I try to follow the same philosophy. I buy only Indian cars.

My kids call the Nano a ‘dabba’ car. They always ask me to buy a bigger car. For me a car is not a status icon but just a tool to do my business. I do not need to have a big car and flash it around. This aspiration for bigger personal vehicles is a dangerous state. This is what I teach my kids and that is why I say that the Nano is the best car.

If someone wrote a biography about you, what do you think the title should be?
‘From village to glamour’. I had never lived in a city till I reached my tenth standard. I have always lived in the villages and I developed all my hobbies being a village boy. My communication skills were pathetic when I joined NID. I wasn’t able to speak English properly. My transformation from a village boy to the design field should be the real essence of the biography.

What are you afraid of regarding the future?
I am always afraid of my business model. Most of the design firms in Europe, including Pininfarina, Italdesign and Idea institute, have a business model where they don’t rely only on revenues from design services. They rely more on production – final production, prototype production. This is how their business becomes viable. I have realized that if Abhikalp has to sustain in the future, it has to have production facilities in addition to design facilities and go into a production-linked business model.

One aspect of design you give the highest priority to?
Viability of the design, especially when you have limited technology.

One design-related book you highly recommend to read?
I always love to read Lee Iacocca. His book teaches you how to evolve yourself as per the circumstances.

Anything else that you would like to tell us?
One thing I would like to share is that the bus that we had designed for Eicher has won the ‘LCV Bus of the Year 2009’ award. On many of the cars nowadays you find written ‘You are following the car of the year’. But nobody talks about buses. So I take this platform to tell people that you have to look at buses too, because they are going to be the lifeline in the near future.

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