This is a question I have often asked in good competent company. People who understand that I am neither talking about the Delhi/Mumbai fashion week nor snappy office presentations.
I mean design associated with startups in India.
I get blown away with the kind of design that barely year old startups come up with, from parts of Europe and the Americas.
And though things have improved in India, design is copycattish at best and downright insulting at worst.
When I say design, most think about issues with website, blogs, social media, collaterals etc. It’s like saying that the worst part of chronic illness is the symptoms and not the disease itself. Its a mistake many of us make with our health and now we intend on doing the same thing with design.
So whats the disease?
It’s a simple lack of empathy for the customer coupled with our absolute, almost cultural aversion to the concept of quality and perfection. Add a total lack of taste/flair and Wolah! you have the average Indian Startup.
Now a few will probably jump with indignant fury at the above statement, foaming from their mouths, ready to take names like – Zomato, Flipkart, Bluebustees etc.
That’s like asking me to look at the IITs/IIMs when I talk about national literacy issues.
The only reason why we talk about the above names, is that they have been written and re-written (and copied) in like dozens of articles who write about them in the same terms as pre-teens talk about Justin Bieber and Edward Cullen (Twilight).
Where does it all begin?
Just like all answers, this one is simple and yet complicated.
1. Economics – It pays to be an engineer, MBA, accountant etc. The road towards arts is probably a bumpy, unpredictable and does not pay (not to mention no HB1 Visa).
2. CopyCat – Look around you. Almost every major brand, product, mall, building etc is a bad copycat of an amazing product/service somewhere in the world. So if it’s cheaper to copy, why be original?
3. Perfection and Quality – When is the last time you met a customer/boss/subordinate/entrepreneur who would bring you to the verge of tears and mad rage for not getting these 2 parameters right? Cause that’s what it takes to make something great.
4. Education – Our education system does a great job to make sure we become some of the best liner thinkers in the world. But it fails when we have to use that liner think and combine it with design.
5. We don’t care – For the customer. Period.
6. There isn’t enough competition – Yet
Analysis
Startups and founding teams must stop aspiring to become the ‘Best in India’ and start aspiring to be the ‘Best in the World’, we will have badly designed products/services from them.
Till the time they don’t put customers are central to their existence. They will continue to be substandard.
“The only way to up your game in basketball, is to stop playing with the boys from the neighbourhood and start playing with men who can kick your ass” – My Basketball Coach.
Startup Yapper 