Beauty & Impact: What Design Can Do
For Darshan Gandhi, good design "begins with space and an environment that you create around design and creativity". This requires what Gandhi termed "Champions of Design", who are in leadership positions and understand the importance of embedding design thinking into the organisation's values.
Gandhi added, "Wherever a design is successful, there is a strong champion."
She explained that this space is more than a physical component, but a value system that goes beyond the design team and designer. She stated, "There has to be a space where multidisciplinary can come in and cross-functional interaction can happen. People across the organisation can come together and exchange ideas."
In 2008, the young leadership of Godrej could see, from company numbers and their own experiences, that the company was starting to lag behind. By 2014, in just 6 years, Godrej Consumer Products were able to transfer and revamp its products and fill in this gap.
"Design can uplift the whole thing. It's not just beautiful-looking products. We changed the way we operated in the company, the way we structured, sourced material, incited consumers, product testing, everything," she added.
The change did not happen overnight, either. Using all Indian, in-house designers, the company tried, tested and experimented. "Not everything was a success, we failed and learned a lot and this is where we reached," said Gandhi.
Godrej Consumer Products is present across more than 90 countries with a turnover of Rs 14,000 crore across the globe. Some of their most successful designs include the Godrej Aer - air freshener range, which was one of their fastest-growing products in India, reportedly turning over Rs 100 crore in just one year.
This has opened up the market for "beauty products of home and car". They also reinvented Godrej hair powder into Godrej Expert Creme Hair Colour. It is now, according to the company, the largest sache creme colour seller in the world.
Gandhi stated that they are "proud when people copy us. It is a great sign of success." It also shows that good design can cut down the progress of a company from 10 to 2 years.
Gandhi intends to keep championing design and to create products with less packaging and low costs while bringing beauty into homes.
