India to become design destination of the world: NID

India is evolving towards becoming a design destination for the world.

While the National Institute of Design (NID) has launched an intensive campaign 'Designed in India-Made for the World,' the country still lags behind in design registrations.

NID, which is playing a lead role in promoting a 'National Design Policy,' now has decided to call for public participation in the form of debate on the draft design policy it has finalised and the first such debate is going to take place in Kolkata on Thursday. The debate would be taken to other cities by NID before the Centre could finalise the policy.

While considering the lack of design registrations in the country, the institute has decided to make mandatory filing of at least one design for registration with the Controller General of Patents, Design & Trade Marks, for its post-graduate students from this academic session.

In yet another attempt to make India a preferred destination for global designs, NID, on Tuesday inaugurated the country's first National Design Business Incubator (NDBI).

"Just as information technology (IT) has given India a pride of place, design is also going to honour the country similarly. NID has been playing an important and significant role in this direction and soon, India would be seen in the world map as a design destination," said Hasmukh Shah, chairman of the governing council of NID.

To discuss the further course of action and sell India as a design destination, NID is going to hold an international design conference, 'Design Education: Tradition & Modernity' during the first week of March in Ahmedabad. Besides other issues, the conference would also discuss the issues related to design registration and design outsourcing.

"In fact, once the National Design Policy is put in place, India would have a proper roadmap to become an ideal outsourcing destination as far as designing is concerned and, at NID, we have already received enquiries from at least 20 countries as they wanted to know whether they can set up shops in India to cater to the design needs of their clients. Apart from NID, designers working independently are also being contacted by reputed design houses across the world to outsource work," said Prashant Kutwala, chief operating officer (COO) of NDBI.

Talking to Business Standard on Wednesday, Kutwala said, "NID is taking the debate on the draft National Design Policy across the country so that the policy does not have any loopholes and suggestions from people concerned could be incorporated to make the policy strong enough for a booming design industry. While working on the direction of drafting the policy, NID also has decided to focus on registration of designs as each of our 145 post-graduate students would be asked to file at least one design registration with the authority and NID would share revenues with these students once their designs are sold in the market."

While a design making student would be given 75 per cent stake of the earning from the registered design, NID through NDBI would retain 25 per cent of the revenue.

On Tuesday, addressing the inaugural function of NDBI, Darlie O Koshy, executive director of NID said, "We are lagging behind in design registrations and to meet the global demands, we have set up the incubator which would help to expedite the process of design registration."

Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat, who also attended the Tuesday function, said, "The state would extend all help for the success of the incubator."