IT trade body Nasscom, in collaboration with Facebook and New York-based co-working space company WeWork, on Monday unveiled Design4India Studio in Bengaluru.
The facility would be a dedicated design studio for web, mobile, augmented reality and virtual reality platforms for start-ups and designers.
‘Fewer designers’
The venture aims at bridging the gap between design and technology by offering spaces for start-ups and designers to explore, innovate and build together.
“There are a lot of engineers coming out of India ... but not an equal number of designers that would help them design better apps,” said Satyajeet Singh, head - strategic product partnerships, Asia and South Asia, Facebook, in a media interaction. “And, that is one of the reasons [why] we took this initiative of building a programme around inspiring design thinking in India,” said Mr. Singh.
The studio, built at WeWork’s Bengaluru facility, will provide young firms access to user experience design process, user testing and augmented reality and virtual reality toolkits, a statement said.
Ravi Gururaj, member, Nasscom Executive Council, said that Indian companies have been mainly engineering and product-led and not necessarily propelled by design. He said the aim of this initiative is to introduce the element of design as early possible among the young companies and provide the skills and tools.
“This is something Facebook and WeWork understand well that to succeed in this new world you need to have ‘design’ built into the process early, it can’t be baked in later,” said Mr.Gururaj, a serial entrepreneur.
Karan Virwani, general manager, WeWork India, said that this partnership is in perfect synergy with WeWork’s commitment to “inspire innovation [and] mentor younger entrepreneurs.”
Mr. Singh of Facebook added that design-led young firms like Myntra and Swiggy are coming out of places such as Bengaluru but Facebook wants to make sure that these companies emerge out of smaller cities as well. “This is a pan India initiative,” said Mr. Singh.
