We are in an interesting time from an economic stand point. The economy is growing at 9.4% per annum and could go past 10%. We are a young country and the average age in the next 20-25 years would be 24-26. That means we would have lots of hands that would be part of our growth. This economic growth is being fuelled primarily by infrastructure and then by manufacturing and building. Governments are making massive investments in infrastructure and transportation sector. This infrastructure growth will in turn fuel foreign direct investment in the country. This is an unprecedented opportunity for growth in this country and Autodesk is in the heart of this growth in terms of the products and services we provide.
People often wonder as to what is the relevance of design in economic growth. Whenever there is an unprecedented economic growth in any part of the world, we have seen that three or four things happen as a by-product. First is commoditisation. One innovation quickly overtakes the other and products that used to have a lifecycle of 3-4 years tend to have a lifecycle of just 6-7 months. The design issue here for companies is how to procure tools and technologies that can shorten the design process and innovate new products that customers want every 6-7 months. And to be able to come up with an innovation at the same price or perhaps, lower than what they offered earlier is another task. That’s the first aspect.
The second aspect is the rapidly rising costs of energy and fuel. In the past 15 years the cost of the fuel has gone up dramatically. But it’s not just about prices, it’s also about environment. As the economy grows, there are more buildings, more cars, so more carbon emissions, more greenhouse gas emissions, adding to global warming. There is a critical need from a design perspective to come up with things - buildings, cars - that are sustainable – that use alternate sources of energy or less energy and emit less carbon and greenhouse gases to be able to save the environment. That’s the second design imperative.

The third design imperative is the fact that as the economy grows, as lifestyles change and as people have more disposable incomes, they tend to become more digital. They splurge on gizmos like cellphones, PDAs and plasma TVs and live in a world that is 24X7 digitally on. The design issue here is how we come up with the content every so often that can fuel or satiate the appetite of the people who are perpetually wired. We believe that the crux of all of this is design and the way that companies can get ahead in the future is through design innovation. The crux of digital innovation is digital prototyping. This is the ability to create digital models and simulate actual usage of these models in real life without having to create a physical model. This would be the future in terms of design.

I don’t think India is any different. Different geographies are in different lifecycles of development. I think they go through different phases depending upon the era in which they started developing. In India, because we are going through a development cycle today, these are the core imperatives that we need to face.