Nov. 10-25
Swati Paranjpe & Siddharth Khandelwal, the Founding Partners of Pollinate Labs, explore how Indian design speaks in many dialects—from survival and culture to aspiration—through the lens of everyday life, creative practices, and layered meaning.
This insight first surfaced during a design research study commissioned by Netflix—one that the Founders of Pollinate Labs had undertaken in their previous practice. The study, “How Indians Consumed Design,” explored how audiences across the subcontinent interpret, engage with, and respond to design in their daily lives.
What it revealed was not a fragmented landscape, but a fluent one— where diversity isn’t noise but narrative. India, it showed, doesn’t design for uniformity; it designs for emotion, access, and adaptation.
For some, design is survival; for others, it’s self-expression or aspiration. Its plurality mirrors India itself — layered, alive, and in motion. India doesn’t design for perfection. It designs for participation.
The finding was simple: what may look messy is actually meaning-making at scale.
If design in India begins anywhere, it begins here—with instinct and improvisation.
Where the world talks about frameworks, India builds with jugaad— design stripped to the bone: messy, makeshift, deeply human.
When potholes threaten safety, Ather Energy’s real-time pothole detection steps in — designed not as luxury, but as protection. In Ladakh, Sonam Wangchuk’s Ice Stupas rise like frozen prayers, storing winter water for summer crops—turning scarcity into continuity.
India, it showed, doesn’t design for uniformity; it designs for emotion, access, and adaptation.
At scale, India’s digital infrastructure mirrors this instinct. UPI, launched in 2016, redefined how over 300million users transact daily. Its genius lies in its simplicity—QR codes, local languages, and no-frills UX, a design that prioritized trust over
At the other end of the spectrum, IRCTC quietly handles chaos at scale—over 32,000 tickets per minute, up from 7,200 in 2014, with the next update aiming for 150,000. That’s monumental design under pressure—built not for beauty, but for resilience.
Ultimately, design in India doesn’t wait for perfect conditions. It thrives precisely because they don’t exist, turning constraint into creativity, survival into service, and necessity into new
If survival is design’s instinct, culture is its memory—and its mirror.
Across textiles, food, and storytelling, Indian design continues to reinterpret its inheritance-reimagining tradition not by rejecting it, but by reframing it for today.
Good Earth and Nicobar capture this duality: one rooted in handcrafted nostalgia, the other fluent in modern, nature-led minimalism. Both prove that abundance and restraint can share a language.
In food, Hunger Inc. translates India’s cultural plurality into design on the plate.
In publishing, Dirty Magazine and Blaft Publications sit on opposite ends of India’s cultural spectrum. Dirty dives into the underbelly of youth culture—its rawness, chaos, and charm. Blaft, meanwhile, resurrects regional pulp, indie comics, and translations—making forgotten languages of storytelling legible again. Both resist refinement, expanding what it means to design for Indian expression.
These expressions remind us that Indian design doesn’t imitate; it converses with the past, the street, and the soul. Cultural expression here isn’t about preservation. It’s about participation.
Furniture studio Phantom Hands bridges eras with its Project Chandigarh—reissuing Jeanneret’s modernist pieces while preserving India’s cane and joinery traditions. It’s a reminder that design can be both archival and forward-looking.
Together, these expressions remind us that Indian design doesn’t imitate; it converses with the past, the street, and the soul. Cultural expression here isn’t about preservation. It’s about participation.
If culture gives design its roots, aspiration gives it reach.
Aspiration in India wears many faces. For a rising middle class, minimalism signals modernity—the quiet power of owning less but better. For others, aspiration is access—the joy of inclusion.
Asian Paints’ Nilaya Anthology celebrates refinement through collectible design, while Zudio democratizes style for price-sensitive youth. Both are valid—one is curated calm, the other energetic chaos.
At a more intimate level, Mahina and Leezus by Leeza Mangaldas reimagine intimacy, sexuality, and comfort with sensitivity and humor. They make design political — showing how storytelling can shift self- image and safety alike.
Here too, a pattern emerges – aspiration in India isn’t linear. It’s layered, plural, and proud — where rebellion and reassurance, luxury and local, coexist without apology.
Taken together, these instincts—survival, culture, aspiration—reveal a larger truth.
To the world, India’s design might seem contradictory. To India, it makes perfect sense. It designs through contradiction, not despite it.
Brands like Swiggy, Zepto, and Blinkit thrive in designed chaos—built for multiple languages, regions, behaviours, and patchy networks, yet unified in experience. Their success isn’t in spite of complexity; it’s because of their fluency in it.
This capacity to design through limitation isn’t a compromise—it’s a capability.
As global markets fragment, audiences diversify, and design languages multiply, India’s creative fluency becomes its quiet superpower.
In that sense, where the world seeks certainty, India designs for movement. Where others chase minimalism, India builds for multiplicity.
Its plurality isn’t confusion — it’s coherence in a changing world. And that may well be the future of design itself.
Swati & Siddharth are the Founding Partners of Pollinate Labs.
