Crafting a National Identity in an International Market: Contemporary Indian Design Gathers Momentum

Crafting a National Identity in an International Market

28 May, 2025 -

Indian design in the twenty-first century continued to gather momentum as the liberalisation policies brought about radical changes in the open market. Almost six decades after independence, India’s sense of region and nation emerged together to understand its own identity. Globalisation was now not restricted to the developed world. The growing socio-economic interdependence of countries worldwide through the widespread diffusion of technology across borders and the interaction and interdependence of people and cultures throughout the world now included India. With the highs and lows for design and craft in the last fifteen years of the twentieth century, Indianness in design had a unifying definition. A distinctive and layered character of Indianness has emerged.

After the National Design Policy was instated in 2007, the Indian government offered increased support for design education by implementing (and providing support for) initiatives such as design innovation centres, design expositions, and design fairs. A significant step was taken with the first Pune Design Festival in 2007, set up by the Association of Designers of India, which is a non-profit organisation run by the voluntary efforts of designers. The theme was sustainability as a critical aspect of design thinking and design solutions. The festival gathered some of the best Indian and international design professionals to present, ideate, and focus upon what drove innovation in the realm of design. It was a successful attempt to bring together an outstanding group of speakers on a single platform and was India’s first comprehensive design forum for inspiration and interaction.

This was followed by Kochi-Muziris Biennale launched in 2012, the India Design ID launched in 2013, The Indian School of Design and Innovation was set up in 2013, and the RAW Collaborative Exhibition launched in 2017. This initiative was set up by private individuals and has endeavoured to bring together design talent from across the country to present their works to connoisseurs of art, design, and aesthetics. It has proven to be a popular show in the last four years with all the well-known designers participating.[1]

There was no dedicated design gallery till 2020. Rooshad Shroff, a highly successful designer, emphasised that no gallery in India wants to exhibit design because art galleries do not understand design. He says that selling furniture requires a completely different awareness and perspective compared to art.[2] Gunjan Gupta, too, laments the lack of a real platform for design, either by the government or a gallery. She says, ‘there is no support or promotion. So how does one really take the best of one’s country and show it to an audience that is really wanting to see it?’[3]

To overcome the lack of a design exhibition space, Shroff set-up a design gallery in Mumbai in November 2020 (Figs. 01, 02 & 03). Shroff expects collaborations with other artists and designers to be showcased at this space.[4]

Another positive result that the National Design Policy brought about was the setting up of the India Design Council in 2009. The objective of the Council was to ‘promote design awareness and effectiveness of Indian design both within India as well as abroad’.[5] The Council is an agency that enables designers in India to have access to global trends and technology tools for product development and innovation.

In the arena of academic writing, books and articles on Indian design have started to be published. Darlie Koshy published his book Indian Design Edge in 2008. This book came after a hiatus of twenty years in design writing since Balaram wrote Thinking Design. Koshy, an internationally acclaimed design management expert and a former director of the NID, attempts to trace the evolution and growth of Indian design. He views design as a means of adding and realising value in the new economy to transform India. This book came at an appropriate time, when the on-the-ground reality was changing for design after the National Design Policy had been put into place. Koshy’s writing provides a contextual framework for tracking the progress of Indian design in the first decade of the millennium. He helped in breaking apart the perceptions and mindsets about Indian design that existed at that time. Another important academic book on design is Rashmi Tamhane and Swapnaa Varma’s Sār: The Essence of Indian Design, published in 2016. They explore Indian design, narrating the stories of two hundred objects.

For a long time there were also no design magazines or journals in India either. A monthly magazine, Pool (now called Design India) (Figs. 04 & 05), was started in 2010 to fill this gap. The publisher is Sudhir Sharma, a designer who believes that design is a way of life. Design impacts life, and society and designers need to be aware of their responsibility and internalise this fact. Design India is an important guide to contemporary Indian design, art, and innovation. It features unknown designers as well as celebrated ones in the fields of Indian fashion, art, architecture, industrial design, film, and furniture.

Meanwhile the pioneer Indian furniture designers were also making their presence felt internationally by exhibiting at galleries and participating in design fairs. Starting with the trailblazer in contemporary Indian design, Satyendra Pakhalé had a solo exhibition, OriginS, that was curated by Gabrielle Ammann at Gallery Ammann in Germany in 2008, Gunjan Gupta followed by exhibiting at Sotheby’s, London, the Experimenta Design Biennale in Lisbon, Design Miami, and the Triennale Design Museum in Milan. Rooshad Shroff too, presented at the London Craft Week in 2019 and Ambiente 2019. These designers, along with many others, continue to present their work globally, often incorporating Indian crafts in ways that reflect their individual creative expressions, thereby crafting a national identity in an international market.

There has been a seismic shift in the Indian design landscape between 2010 and 2025 because many design studios combined an Indian design language with a globalised one at various levels and this opened a new customer base for them. Gunjan Gupta says that buyers now want things that do not resemble something else, they have to be unique. As a result, the designers have to go beyond Indian kitsch and the universal idea of design and be able to successfully blend the two.

A quarter of a century into the new millennium, limited-edition furniture design has made substantial advancements in India. Early government design initiatives and (more so) the National Design Policy paved the way for design. What was laid down in this blueprint for the design and craft sectors is being achieved by designers, which is to make craft contemporary and relevant to the current design market. The support network for design is well established now with private design groups being formed. These have helped in presenting a more unified voice for design, thereby helping to influence public policy. It can safely be said that contemporary Indian design has seen a significant emergence in the past decade and a half, skillfully blending traditional elements with modern innovation. Far from being a fleeting trend, it is carving out a lasting and influential place in the global design landscape.

References
[1] https://www.rawcollaborative.c....

[2] Interview with Rooshad Shroff.

[3] Interview with Gunjan Gupta.

[4] Megha Mahindru, ‘First look: Rooshad Shroff’s new gallery space in Mumbai.’ Vogue India Magazine, November 11, 2020. https://www.vogue.in/culture-a....

[5] Government of India, National Design Policy. 2007, p.14.