Niti Bhan

 

Niti Bhan is a global nomad who calls Singapore, India and the United States home. Based in San Francisco, she creates strategies for entering new markets, identifying new revenue and growth opportunities for her clients. Her 15 years of experience include employers such McCann Erickson Worldwide, Hewlett Packard India, The Second City and most recently, the Institute of Design. She is an engineer and an MBA with significant graduate design education from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad and the Institute of Design, Chicago. She is also the Editor of the Core77/BusinessWeek Design Directory, whose focus is to maximize the ROI in design. Her articles have been published in BusinessWeek’s Innovation and Design section, Core77, New Design Magazine, UK and FORTUNE’s BusinessInnovation blog.

 

 

India is the perfect testbed for global design initiatives that focus on the bottom of the pyramid segment, particularly in emerging markets. More than 50% of the population of the world lives on two dollars a day or less. Not only does 70% of India's population live in the rural heartlands of the nation but a significant percentage of those fall below the official poverty line. Eames said over 50 years ago that India's needs are clearly differentiated - food, shelter, population and distribution. How can the design community shape and support innovative business models, products and services that can drive value to the the underserved, creating wealth that flows to raise the basic standard of life for them? We need to begin by understanding these segments, how they live, what they aspire to, what their hope and dreams are before we can begin meeting their undiscovered wants and needs.