2012-05-18T07:28:31Z Manoj Kothari Copyright 2012, Manoj Kothari SPHPBLOG
Many luminaries in the global design and innovation arena would be speaking in this power-packed event. Sean Carney, chief design officer and senior vice president at Royal Philips Electronics; Benoit Jacob, head of design at BMWi; Frank Stephenson, Design Director McLaren Automotive; Alessandro Finetto, senior director, global consumer design, Sung Han Kim, head of design, Samsung Europe; Whirlpool EMEA & Asia and Christian Buetner, industrial design manager at Bosch are amongst the other invited speakers in the event.



The event focuses on manufacturing, universal design, emerging trends and methodologies related to design and innovation.

Manoj is the only speaker from India, who along with Cathy-Huang (President of China Bridge) will speak on building value through local insights in product development process. Manoj will illustrate his point from the recent case-studies of Onio's work, which were meant to bring disruptive innovation for Indian market, but now they have a become a global product case study. ]]> http://www.oniodesign.com/news/index.php?entry=entry120316-011608 2012-03-16T00:00:00Z 2012-03-16T00:00:00Z

Godrej invited Manoj to deliver a keynote speech during the MEGA series of workshop being conducted across the group. These workshops are aimed at raising the design competitiveness of the company by sensitizing the key empployees towards User Focused Innovation,Brand-led-Design and Empathic Innovation techniques.

Godrej is one of the leading Indian business house with presence in several countries across several domains ranging from soaps to rockets. ]]> http://www.oniodesign.com/news/index.php?entry=entry111222-041441 2011-12-22T00:00:00Z 2011-12-22T00:00:00Z

A business delegation comprising of heads and business leads of the Finnish companies, ranging from beverages to clean-energy-tech, visited Onio on Oct 18th, 2011.

This visit was organised by Finpro and co-ordinated by Chennai office. Onio's founder director, Manoj Kothari welcomed the guests and delivered a short presentation on cultural nuances of conducting business in India. Group also discussed positioning and messaging issues in brands while dealing with Indian market. An interesting question came-up during the discussion that ensued was, how can Onio's consumer segmentation, come handy in handling HR issues better, by the foreign companies.


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One of pearls of wisdom by Prof Nadkarni -"For every project, please try to create one concept that is 'trend-setting'; if not for the client, let it be an internal achievement". ]]> http://www.oniodesign.com/news/index.php?entry=entry111120-073507 2011-11-20T00:00:00Z 2011-11-20T00:00:00Z

www.tedxiitkanpur.com

http://www.ted.com/tedx/events/3834]]> http://www.oniodesign.com/news/index.php?entry=entry111102-043913 2011-11-02T00:00:00Z 2011-11-02T00:00:00Z

Here is the complete video of Manoj's presentation at TEDx NID Bangalore, discussing the three essential design attributes for India-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUuIu2KvNCE
]]> http://www.oniodesign.com/news/index.php?entry=entry111102-043535 2011-11-02T00:00:00Z 2011-11-02T00:00:00Z www.facebook.com/tedxnidb and Twitter- www.twitter.com/tedxnidb ]]> http://www.oniodesign.com/news/index.php?entry=entry110905-052051 2011-09-05T00:00:00Z 2011-09-05T00:00:00Z
KOLKATA: Hindustan Motors (HM) has roped in Pune-based design firm Onio Design for giving a new look to its iconic car Ambassador. The first variant would be ready by December. It may be noted that HM introduced ‘original’ wheels of India, Ambassador in 1958, followed by not so spoken about Contessa in 1984.

The exercise is part of a strategy to revitalise HM which was on the brink to refer to BIFR following 90% networth erosion in the first quarter of this fiscal. HM managing director Manoj Jha said that Onio Design is working on the styling of Amby along with a core team of HM. “The first prototype will be ready by December this year. The first new look Amby will be commercially launched in first quarter of 2011-12. We can say that it would be a better proposition. Our aim to broadening the target audience is by offering Amby in different variants . The new variant will be rolled out from Uttarpara.”

"All the new variants of the Ambassador will be available with an engine size ranging between 1500 cc to 2000 cc," he said

On the Chennai facility, he said that now the capacity utilisation is around 40% but it would rise as Mitsubishi is planning to introduce more variants in India. it is also looking at better capacity utilisation in component business.

He also said in the previous fiscal, the company had sold 8,000 units of the Ambassador, while it expects the sales to cross 10,000 units this fiscal.

"The company is mulling options to manufacture a hatchback car in the coming months. However, the manufacture of the car will be based mainly on the feedback from customers and we will introduce a totally new variant of ambassador, the design of which is being done by a Pune based company," Jha said.

Hindustan Motors, which had launched the diesel and CNG variants of its light commercial vehicle (LCV), Winner XD, will also manufacture two tonne payload capacity LCVs in the coming months.

"We are looking for a pan India presence with the introduction of the new variants. By next year we plan to double the number of dealers," Jha said.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/new ... 959994.cms
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Mr. Dara Byramjee, with the new product, designed by Onio, photo courtesy- Hindu Businessline


Onio helped Godrej give the safes the much needed techno-appeal and features to bring it in sync with the fast modernizing bank interiors.
This work is a part of bigger design mandate for Onio, under which entire product category is being redesigned to bring better brand semantics.

The redesigned fascia has enhanced security features (BurglarAlarm, Security camera, Controlled access intelligent key and interiors with LED lights) along with a unique 'Eagle-Eye' handle that gives it the required visible solidity.

Apart from usability research with the bank officials, there was a detailed color-material-finish research was conducted.

Other products from Godrej Security Division, would be rolled out soon with the redesigned looks and features.



]]> http://www.oniodesign.com/news/index.php?entry=entry101009-225812 2010-10-10T00:00:00Z 2010-10-10T00:00:00Z Design thinking is a new philosophy that helps designers enter the boardroom and help companies in
brand experience, trends research, business process design and corporate strategy, reports Vikas Kumar- The Economic Times - 2nd August 2010



THERE’S LITTLE IN MANOJ KOTHARI’S appearance to suggest the wildly creative nature of his profession. The relaxed
formal attire and well-trimmed look point towards a serious business professional. And when he uses terms like “brand architecture” and “perceptual mapping” it’s easy to think of him as a branding guru or a market researcher.

But Kothari is actually a designer. A designer with a difference.Kothari, who founded Onio Design,and others of his ilk are no longer content designing refrigerators, mobile phones and soap wrappers. They now hope to take on a bigger, more serious role in their clients’ businesses—from brand experience and trends research to business process design to re-crafting corporate strategy. In short, they want a seat at the decision-making table.
How? Design thinking is a new philosophythat has helped these firms move into areas traditionally occupied by research houses, advertising agencies and consulting firms. “Design is a mindset. A design orientation helps see the world in a different way,” says Santosh Desai, managing director, Future Brands, a brand consulting firm. For someone who has no design background, Revathi Kant’s position as head of Titan’s Design Studio is a perfect indicator of this shift in perception. “The transformation is happening. We are now beginning to realise in India that design is going to be a key differentiator,” she says. Though it cannot help size the market, design helps capture even what consumers aren’t saying yet, she says. “Market research gets the facts but design gives a better understanding of deep latent needs of consumers… To know what’s the next big thing, what people on the‘extreme’ are doing, you need design research,” she says. ACASE IN POINT IS ONIO’S recent project for Secure Meters, a Rs 700-crore company based in Udaipur that provides metering solutions for consumers of utility companies and to industrial customers. Secure went global in 1996 after acquiring British metering company PRI, an erstwhile technical collaborator. It snapped up five other small brands in Sweden, Australia and the UK over the next decade. Pitted against global giants such as Honeywell and GE, Secure had a milliondollar question to answer: whether to continue with a portfolio of local brands across the globe or opt for a single corporate identity?

It was, in classical marketing terms, a choice between a house of brands (like P&G) and a branded house (like
Samsung). Given the scale of Secure’s worldwide operations and different cultures involved, it was necessary to run a comprehensive and rigorous validation exercise before arriving at any decision, says Sanjaya Singhal, managing director, Secure Meters. Besides ad agencies and market research firms, Singhal invited Onio, which had previously done a visual re-branding exercise for the company, for opinion.“The question posed to us was—how could we transition these brands into the overall (Secure) brand without losing the equity of those individual brands,” says Kothari. Applying techniques like perceptual mapping (where stakeholders’ erceptions about the company and its culture were mapped on a twodimensional scale) and corporate ethnography (observation and in-depth conversations with people to uncover patterns of thought) Kothari and his team met customers, dealers, istributors and employees across four locations in Sweden, India and the UK in an exercise that lasted six months. Kothari explains that he used methods integral to a designer’s toolkit—seeking insights rather than inferences,visualizing problems across multiple dimensions, storytelling, prototyping and making everyone a participant in the process. “We involved people in visualizing the new integrated brand. People realized how a small local company can take on global competition; what values they’ve observed in the company;what they would like to build afresh and so on.” For example, a senior manager at one of the acquired companies, Horstmann
Controls in Bristol, UK, who had moved from a bigger competitor Landis+Gyr, was surprised about the nimbleness agility of Secure’s culture. Even casual conversations weren’t ignored. When he was first being chauffeured to the company’s office in Udaipur, Kotharirecalls asking the driver what he thought of his employer. “Yeh log hamesha kuch naya karte rehte hain (they are always doing something new),” he was told. That was a simple yet crucial insight into the innovative nature of the company’s culture. The exercise validated a single brand
identity approach that would espouse the core values emerging from the research. For a mid-sized player like Secure, it also made economic sense to promote a single brand globally, as a ‘branded house’.Singhal says it was the back-to-basics approach by Kothari and his team that made decision simpler to make: “They were not just the solution but part of the solution, which we crafted for ourselves. We learnt the methodology and process,so the choices were conscious choices.”

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/new ... 246279.cms]]> http://www.oniodesign.com/news/index.php?entry=entry100802-042851 2010-08-02T00:00:00Z 2010-08-02T00:00:00Z