Design Positive (D+ve)

In this episode we speak to Dhruv Saxena, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Obvious, a strategic product consultancy about agency culture, conscious choices, inclusion, design operations, balance between business & social impact and more. Dhruv shares his views and number of anecdotes from his experience building Obvious that partners with businesses to create digital experiences across a wide range of domains and industries. Since its inception, Obvious has helped create several of SE Asia's unicorn startups and worked with 120+ startups, established industry titans and Fortune 500 companies such as Flipkart, Go-Jek, Myntra, Swiggy, Wikipedia, xto10x and many more. Obvious is known for its play-books and design culture.

Dhruv holds an MFA from the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID) as well as a Master in Industrial Design from the Indian Institute of Science (IISC). Previously, Dhruv focused on designing tangible interfaces through collaborations with designers and professors at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, MIT Media Lab and Stanford.

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In this episode we speak to Deepa Bachu,  a design leadership veteran who has about two decades of industry experience in creating compelling global products. She started as a software engineer like most of us. She grew quickly to lead Innovation and Global Strategy for Intuit, India. Currently Deepa runs Pensaar Design which is a design strategy and consulting firm to help businesses co.create awesome, by design.

Deepa has created multiple global products, across multiple domains, across multiple platforms. Her passion is to transform customers’ lives by creating products that solve their biggest unmet needs.

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In this episode we speak to Niyam Bhushan,  an industry-pioneer and industry-veteran in various disciplines of Design. He is a successful entrepreneur with two businesses he set up early in his career. First venture at age 16 in digital publishing, with international clients, which he ran for 12 years. Second, as a value-added solutions provider with Apple in the 1990s. Checkout this TEDx talk on Design that changes the narrative of Design from India in the world

He is currently augmenting his large legacy and initiatives of Design, through his ‘Awaken Your Creativity’ workshops. These use Dance, Mindfulness, and Meditation techniques to unlock explosive creativity in participants.

Connect with Niyam

In this episode we speak to Unmesh Kulkarni, founder of Oceanic Circle, a human-centered platform for Social Innovation, about design for social impact, the business of social impact, accountability, risks, government intervention, measurements and more. 

Before jumping into social entrepreneurship, Unmesh handled global and regional design leadership roles at Honeywell and Philips, working across continents, living in India and China, bringing solutions to global markets at scale. Prior to that, he cofounded a multi-disciplinary design consultancy and appropriate technology lab, Design Matters.

In this episode we speak to Deepa Reddy, a lead cultural anthropologist and a faculty at University of Houston. She has published on topics ranging from religious nationalism, caste and ethnicity, women's activism, bioethics and blood donation, and human-technology interactions. She leads a group called Shalikuta in a project documenting Indian heritage rices and she is leading The Asthma Files (a multi-city study on air quality and governance), Chennai chapter currently.

In this episode we speak to Alok Nandi, a designer-entrepreneur working out of Brussels, creative director-partner of Architempo and Spread Design BV. He was global president of IxDA - Interaction Design Association. He is author, speaker and also professor of design and innovation in Lyon, France, at Institut Paul Bocuse, a culinary/hospitality school. His studies combined engineering, management and film.

In this episode we speak to Dr. Girish Prabhu, SVP - Innovation & UX @ HFI and Founder of Sakalya.IFDE about a rare topic from the world of design world called Responsible Design and explore the what, the why and the how with our design veteran Dr. Girish Prabhu.. 

Dr. Girish Prabhu has 25+ years of experience in empathetic research, innovation, design, new product & business development, and product localisation. His experience and expertise covers various domains such as education, healthcare, entertainment, and digital products & services. Girish has held various leadership and management positions in academics, new business development, research, and product commercialisation at HFI, Srishti, Intel, HP and Eastman Kodak, both in the US and India, and was instrumental in implementing human centred design and innovation frameworks in multiple product areas. Following his passion for futuristic design, he founded Sakalya.IFDE, an institute that promotes design futures and responsible entrepreneurship. With his deep understanding of local and international consumers and ecosystems, he regularly mentors design led entrepreneurship and innovation projects and is passionate about bringing ideas to market as meaningful products.

As a Strategist, Innovator, Design Led Entrepreneur, Humanist, and a Responsible Designer he lives by the philosophy - “If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got”.