Ashwini Deshpande

Ashwini Deshpande

Co-founder - Elephant Design

Ashwini is a graduate of National Institute of Design, Ahemadabad (NID) and a co-founder of Elephant Design, India’s largest independent integrated design consultancy with offices in India and Singapore.

She has done award-winning work for global brands in automobile, engineering, FMCG, food service, healthcare & personal care segments. Some of the awards include Global ReBrand 100 (USA), Asiastar for Packaging Excellence (Singapore), A’Design Awards (Italy), Best of the Best at CII Design Excellence, Designomics, The India Story award etc

Ashwini was invited by Rockefeller Foundation to participate in a global Social Impact summit and by Danish Design Foundation to partner with Copenhagen Co-creation Agenda. She has lectured across more than 20 countries including icograda Design week in Vancouver & Istanbul, Business of Design week in Hong Kong and International Design Congress at Mexico as well as in South Korea more recently.

She has been a jury member on Cannes Lions (France), Global ReBrand 100 (USA), Spikes Asia (Singapore), Design for Asia (HK), Kyiv International Advertising Festival (Ukrain) & Design for Change (India) Awards and was part of the International A’Design Awards (Italy) jury this year.

It is a feeling of pride to have Ashwini Deshpande for the #9Women9Days season 3. We are indeed honoured and happy to feature her.

What am I known for ? OR What I am known to be? 

I am known as a designer & co-founder of Elephant, India’s top ranked pioneering design consultancy.

The one advise I would give to my younger self on professional and personal front 

There is never an ideal moment for starting anything. So if you want to do something, start immediately.

A tough decision that I needed to take as a Leader and its impact on me 

Learning to delegate was a tough step as a designer, but was necessary as a leader since I wanted to see Elephant grow.

Delegating started with smaller tasks where I learnt how it is important to define the basics, but is equally important to leave some freedom for the team members to take & own their decisions. This grew into handing over larger responsibilities like financial decisions, relationship management and design direction to capable and talented colleagues. It strengthened the team spirit within the team. Through delegation, I managed to find time for keeping myself aligned with global trends & practices that I could share with team. I also managed to focus on spreading awareness about design profession through delivering talks, conducting workshops, writing articles and volunteering for Association of Designers of India.

Biggest learning from my parents 

Staying rooted and optimistic.

What has been the biggest challenge/s at work and what did you learn from it? 

Design is one of the most undervalued interventions in Indian business ecosystem despite the fact that Apple, world’s first trillion dollar company vouches by the value it has created through great design. Biggest challenge has been to make businesses understand the value of design as an intrinsic part of the process and not just as a superficial, cosmetic makeover. Here, my learning is that if you want to see any change in mindsets & attitudes and prove the worth of your profession, you have to demonstrate it through success stories of clients. And for that you have to consistently work with empathy and honesty in solving problems through design thinking.

An accomplishment you are proud of? 

It has been a long journey of nearly 30 years of pioneering design practice in India. To not only start a multidisciplinary design consultancy, but to also grow it to a scale, manage to groom & retain some of the best talent and to get global recognition… I believe that is the greatest accomplishment. I am proud of the team and the company we have built.