Jury

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Ashish Deshpande



Co-Founder & Director, Elephant Design

An Industrial Designer from the National Institute of Design, Ahmadabad, India, Ashish started his design entrepreneurship journey, 30 years ago, by co-founding India’s pioneering design practice, Elephant. Elephant today is present in India as well as Singapore. Ashish leads Product & Retail Experience Innovation group and has lead projects ranging from consumer appliances related to air, water & energy, medical equipment, wearable electronics, IoT, automotive and retail. Ashish has worked with CIIE, Intel and T-Hub Hyderabad to mentor start ups through Design Thinking and conducts workshops on Growth by Design & Product Innovation and has been invited to speak at International conferences and conduct workshops in India & abroad. Ashish is President, Association of Designers of India, an active member of the Design Alliance Asia and is on the jury of India Design Mark. He has served as appointed member of the 2nd. India Design Council and was invited to attend Good Design Mark Jury process, Japan. Ashish has been on the Product Design Jury at Cannes Lions as well as Taiwan International Student Design Competition and was President Jury of Lexus Design Awards India 2019. He is an Independent Director appointed to the Board of Directors of Symphony Limited.

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Geet Rathi



Creative & Design Director, TBWA\India

Geet Rathi is a multi-award winning Design Director and a Creative Director, with TBWA\India, and heads design duties for TBWA Design By Disruption. She is a passionate design specialist but first and foremost an ideas person. She aspires to create work that’s worth talking about and gives people a reason to care. She likes to think of a solution first and then think about the form it would take, and that’s her mantra in most of the work she creates. Geet has won numerous local and international awards including a United Nations Grand Prix for Good in Healthcare for Blink To Speak - World’s first eye language guide. Geet has also judged at other international award shows such as Cannes Lions, Adfest and Dubai Lynx. She plays an active role in growing and mentoring young women into future creative leaders in an area of personal passion. She was recognised as Campaign Asia Pacific Women to Watch 2018. She is the one who conceived and designed the world’s first eye language - Blink To Speak with her team at TBWA.

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Gianluca Crudele



Design Director, Superunion

Gianluca Crudele is an award winning designer with international experience in Milan, London and now Hong Kong. Since joining Superunion Hong Kong in 2014, Gianluca has worked on both local and International brands, across multiple sectors, such as Gibraltar BSN, The Hong Kong Jockey Club, Hong Kong Exchange, Pizza Hut and Amnesty International. His current position as Design Director allows him to influence any brand development that hooks onto compelling insights, to deliver creative solutions and business effectiveness. Gianluca holds a BA in Communication Design from the Polytechnic of Milan and a MA in Branding Design from the Nottingham Trent University.

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Kunel Gaur



Founder & Creative Director, Animal

Kunel is the founder creative director at Animal, an independent creative agency working out of New Delhi. Kunel is an award winning advertising/design creative - with an overall experience of 17 years in Advertising, Graphic Design, Illustration, Films and Online. He started his career as a graphic designer with Mudra DDB working on sign design and guidelines for Delhi Metro, moving into web design for brands like American Express and HBO. He then moved to advertising full time working on brands like The Times of India, Nokia, Pepsico, Airtel, Audi India, Fritolay amongst others, working through agencies like JWT, Saatchi & Saatchi and Wieden + Kennedy. During his agency experience he won several Indian and international awards for his work on Nokia, Pepsi and National Geographic Channel. In 2014, he founded Animal, working for brands like Google, OYO Hotels and Homes, Housing.com, adidas Originals, UNICEF, Budweiser, OnePlus, Invest India, Netflix, Reebok, Keventers, Times Internet, Amnesty International and Hyatt amongst others.

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Mark Williams



Co-founder & Creative Director, That Thing

In his 7+ years at London based brand agency, venturethree, he developed the new brand for TransferWise, the award-winning rebrand for British institution, Little Chef. Penguin, to define what makes them special in the new world of publishing and helping them to connect directly with consumers. Manchester United to connect with fans around the world and BAA to bring a new form of transportation to Heathrow airport. In India, Mark helped Star, India’s leading TV network, to relaunch the rebrand of the Star Sports network, Star Plus, India’s no.1 TV channel. And, Life OK. He spent 4 months living in Mumbai, while working closely with Reliance to create India’s biggest 4g network Jio. In Europe, he’s worked Liberty Global, and with Sky in Germany to reposition and relaunch their complete product portfolio under the new Sky brand. Since setting up That Thing in 2015, he has led brand projects for Hilton, Kuoni and a raft of start-ups and scale-ups. Recently, Mark was the Creative Director on Virgin Active’s global advertising campaign and is currently working on an exciting project with Hotstar – the world’s fastest growing entertainment platform.

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Ruchita Madhok



Founder & Principal, Kahani Designworks

Ruchita Madhok is a designer, cultural manager, writer and entrepreneur. She is the Founder-Director of communication design studio Kahani, and publisher of the Storycity imprint of heritage guides.Ruchita works at the intersection of the creative industries and cultural economy in India. Her practice spans the areas of communication, design and strategy for cultural institutions, foundations and creativity-led enterprises. Educated as a designer, she has degrees from National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad and Central Saint Martins, London. In addition, she is trained as an arts manager as has been awarded the ARThinkSouthAsia fellowship in 2013. She has worked extensively with organizations such as the Wellcome Collection, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, INTACH, Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum, CSMVS Museum, Kolkata Centre for Creativity and Piramal Museum of Art on projects spanning the fields of design, communication and branding. Ruchita’s work in design has been recognised with the CII Design Excellence Award and numerous Kyoorius Awards including the Black Elephant. She has been visiting faculty at NID Ahmedabad, ISDI and Basant Sheth College of Architecture.

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Sonia Manchanda



Founding Partner, Spread Design & Consulting (India)

Sonia Manchanda is a Design Strategist, Graphic Designer and Designpreneur, with 20+ years experience, building creative organisations of repute and leading transdisciplinary project teams on massive transformational projects for government and industry nationally and globally. She led the Design and Look for the 19th Commonwealth Games. Her Open Innovation and Design Strategy Project Dream:in has been awarded as a global gamechanger by Metropolis Magazine, USA. Her work has been featured in four global books, the latest of them being ‘Do Better With Less’ by Navi Radjou and Jaideep Prabhu. Sonia is a graduate of the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. She is an appointed member of the India Design Council, is on the CII Design Council and is a Governing Council Member of Forge, an incubator in Coimbatore. She is also a trustee at Nrityagram, the only ‘dance village’ in the world. She is a Founding Partner at Spread Design + Learning, a transdiciplinary practice located at Design Farm where design is strategy, craft and a way of life. She has also set up the Design Barn, India’s first independent Design Center to bridge the design gap in India and make design accessible to everyone. She’s a naturalist and a farmer, growing ideas and cooking up strategies and veggies.

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Sudhir Sharma



Founder & Creative Chairman, INDI Design

Sudhir Sharma is the founder and Chief Executive of INDI Design. Sudhir holds a Post graduate degree from the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad. A reputed pioneering Design and Business transformation consultant, Sudhir has 3 decades of experience, working in India, traveling extensively in Asia / Europe region and lecturing and speaking in various universities. He sits on the various design, innovation and management Council Boards and Institutions. He is known for his brand design work for many Indian Brands. Bajaj Auto, Bajaj Finserv, Varroc, ICICI, Venkies, Standard Chartered Bank, Commonwealth Youth Games 2008, Pune City Branding are some of them. Sudhir was awarded with the Most Promising Entrepreneur of the Year 2009 by APEA for his contributions to India’s design business industry. He is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the award winning POOL Magazine. POOL is India’s only magazine focussed on Design, Innovation and Creative sectors.He hosts India's Best Design Awards and an yearly event on design “The Pool Show” Sudhir is a founder and President of the “Designindia”; an online community of professional designers in India. Designindia has partnered with Rebrand 100, Fine Arts College, Shanghai Normal University (SHNU), Visual Information Design Association of Korea (VIDAK), Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), National Institute of Design (NID) for various events over the years. He was on the jury panel of the inaugural Cannes Lions for Design 2008, Adfest, Spikes Asia, Dutch Design Awards, Design Turkey, Top Innovation Award China. He is a member of the India Design Council, nominated by the government of India, and is Alumnus of the World Economic Forum (WEF) on the Global Council for Design. As a distinguished professional, He has been conferred the title role of “Professor of Practice” at the Ajeenkya DY Patil University, Pune. Design Intelligence Awards from China has appointed him as an Expert to nominate indian entries to this very prestigious awards. These awards give out prizes worth Rs. 8 crores every year.