Revathi Kant is a byword for innovation. Throughout her tenure at Titan , she has been at the forefront of crafting beautiful products that score high at both utility and design. We talk to her about the importance of design as a strategic element of business.
In a career spanning over 25 years, Revathi Kant, the VP of Design, Innovation & Development, at Titan has set the benchmark of success for the jewellery industry. She was one of the first to create differentiated products on the basis of sound consumer research. She introduced the concept of branding for jewellery with different milestone collections and signature styles. She has successfully created a work culture of creativity and innovation to which the Titan and Tanishq Design Studios stand testimony to. The FWD team caught up with her recently to talk about her passion for designing products that consumers love.
You began your career in marketing and then you made the shift to design. How did you manage that transition and what were you able to bring into this role?
Earlier in my career, I was on the other side, where people would create products and we used to market it. But when I got into this role of managing design and feel, I realised that I love products.
The category doesn’t matter to me. I’m passionate about the whole process of product creation from the conception to the final making of the product. My strength is understanding the business
need and marrying it with design and innovation to come up with the solution which meets both the design requirement as well as the business requirement. If you’re creating something really
amazing it should be profitable to make and there should be consumer appreciation. Of course not all that we do are successes; there are failures, but in most cases, because of the process we follow in terms of understanding and trying to eliminate things which are not working early on, we are able to do it well. I didn’t do anything special; I just had it in me. I’m interested in making things beautiful. So I’m able to guide my talented team and also bring in the business sensitivity.
Design used to be on the periphery of business strategy. But do you see that notion changing?
Earlier design was a function of marketing as a finishing touch to add aesthetics, but when companies did realise that design could be the true differentiator it has developed in importance. If you
take any product today, technology is the same, material is the same, cost is more or less the same. What differentiates one company from another is what they invest on design. Design started first at the surface level, now it is more at an intrinsic level. Consequently, design management became important and many companies have in-house design teams or studios that are independent. And more than design management, design thinking as a concept is prevalent now. Design thinking is finding a creative solution to any business problem and you don’t have to be a designer for that.
You mentioned that design is the true differentiator. In the age of smart technologies, how do you see the role of design changing?
The way it’s evolving is that design and technology have to be married together very quickly. Today the world is about technology; everything is “Smart”, but the smartness has to come through a design feature which you’re able to use. Any innovation has to be packaged and given to you. I’m not seeing design losing any of its core properties – whatever design stood for, such as ease of use, functionality, comfort, and beauty, it will continue in the future. Whoever can achieve the successful marriage of design with technology in the best possible manner is going to be the winner.
Titan and Tanishq have many subbrands that are managed by you. What is the process involved in creating and maintaining a unique identity for each one?
In our typical collection-based approach, there is a lot of thinking that goes into it. When we create a collection, there is a common DNA, there are some special features we would like to highlight which needs to be taken care of when we designed the product. After the products are made, we need to ensure that the advertising communicates the right message. If we are we are not talking to each other, we would lose the connect. It’s a circular thing, the inspiration has to go through and be communicated to the consumer for the ‘wow’ effect.
What we typically do is we sit with the marketing team and the agency and brief them about the inspiration. They take our inspiration and even the working names that we create, the stories and the highlights of the collection and they build something for the target group to whom we cater. Our designers are part of that briefing session where there is handover and takeover and they work on it.
Speaking of collections, the Mia collection was a successful initiative that you were instrumental in launching. Could you share with us the entire journey from ideation to designing the products?
Since we are a consumer-centric company, we start everything with the consumer. The key is to identify what could be a potential opportunity. In the case of Mia, it was targeted at working women. Typically, when we look at precious jewellery it is for special occasions, marriage and so on. No one really looked at jewellery for working women.In every household, women were coming out to work.The macro picture is changing to what is called the she-economy. So ‘she’ has got the power, money and her behaviour as the consumer has the power to influence the market. When we looked at our own category, we saw that we were not doing anything to tap into that market. We started our research by identifying markets where we would go and meet consumers from different socioeconomic classification. And if it was working women, we typically would go and meet them to understand the type of work they do, their expectations, understand dresses they wear when they go to work. With balancing child care, handling kitchen and household duties and rushing to work,the time available to her for ‘self’ before she gets out to work is minimal. Adornments cannot take a long time to wear. It has to be convenient, light weight, and complimentary, these are some of the deep insights that we gathered.
So how did you distil these insights into a great collection of products?
We came to a conclusion that if we had to do some jewellery for working women, we need to keep in mind a couple of things. The first is convenience; it has to be easy to wear on-the-go. Next is comfort – we felt that the jewellery must be comfortable to wear. Third was the look – it had to look modern and progressive. But at the same time, it cannot be ultra-modern – it had to be ethno-contemporary, a term we coined. Lastly, it had to be lightweight and affordable. These were the four key points around which we worked. This is how we identify the business In Conversation
opportunity, figure out the consumer segment, go to them and do a deep level of understanding and cull out insights and keep those insights as the key cornerstone of the design structure.
While addressing the CII-NID Design Summit in New Delhi, you had screened a film that showcased in-house work culture at Titan? What was the thought-process behind that and how was it relevant?
The session where I came to do the presentation was about ‘Make in India’ and the theme of my presentation was ‘Think with your heart, and not your mind.’ The thinking was that people will come, there will be a lot of investment and the economy would grow and people will get jobs, and so on. The message I wanted to convey in that particular forum is while we do it, let us not forget how we do it.
As a Tata Company, I take pride in saying that when we do it, we always consider the people around us. We are always looking at our various stakeholders and their benefits. Look at the jewellery industry – it’s a Rs 250,000 crores industry. Though so many people are employed, they are still living in pathetic conditions.
While we become big companies, show major turnover, growth and profits, there is a section of people working extremely hard to make this happen. And how are we taking care of them. I wanted to share our story as a motivation for other corporates or people who are there. You can be profitable; you can do things well, but by also making sure that people involved are equally benefitted. That is what we do on a day-to-day basis, how we behave and that was great. While ‘Make in India is such a great thing, we believe that we are at a plain slate. What we write here today will define what we are going to be in the next 50 years.
Interviewed by Atheena Wilson Text: Anish Shankar Photos: Various Sources