As Head of Design at Mahindra & Mahindra, Ramkripa Ananthan is no doubt a gender bender. As she takes forward the Mahindra Group’s tweak-design philosophy of ‘Adventure and Freedom’, Sumantra B Barooah and Sumana Sarkar speak to her about M&M’s vision of cars in 2050 and how design acts as a bridge to strengthen consumer connect in a fast-changing industry.
An automobile designer is an artist with a difference. With the powertrain as their palette, their creation brings life to metal and lends power to the automaker’s aspiration. “Design is about everything, the overall form, about every element in the system talking together”— As the lines, forms and colours blend effortlessly with concepts, techniques, aerodynamics, it is about creating “a common narrative and all of them talking the same thing.” Well, that how Ramkripa Ananthan, the Head of Design at Mahindra & Mahindra, defines automobile designing in today’s context.
Ramkripa or Kripa as she is popularly known as, is a graduate from IDC, IIT-B and she also studied Mechanical Engineering at BITS, Pilani. The major works of the team led by her include the Mahindra TUV 300, XUV 500, KUV 100, XUV 300 SUVs and the Marazzo MPV. She was also a part of the team involved in designing the Bolero and Xylo.
Speaking about her design journey over the course of the past two decades and more, she says, “Our journey was all about finding out and defining urban SUVs, a little bit of course correction to make our language, while still being distinctive, creating a wider appeal, focusing more on perceived quality, details – that’s where we are now.”
An example of course correction is, perhaps, can be seen in the Mahindra KUV100 NXT which apparently is getting a better response than its predecessor, the KUV100. The original entry level SUV was targeted at young Indians with some very trendy design elements like the outside rearview mirrors designed like a fist and headlamps that looked like glares but received a lukewarm market response. However, Kripa points out that in terms of the KUV 100’s design, “it is a little ahead of its time” but the product in that genre boarded the bus rather late. She highlights that “Design is about everything, the overall form, about every element in the system talking together – a common narrative and all of them talking the same thing. So we made a very strong orientation in-house.”
Communicable design language
A definitive design language continues to be a key focal point. As Kripa charts M&M’s journey through the years, she highlights the bond that an OEM forms with its customers and importance of considering how the customer and the markets are evolving. She points out that the design language needs to communicate with the customers while aligning with the legacy the car maker is taking forward. “From there, we set to go a bit deeper into the need of the customer, more of their visceral design aspect. We have defined ourselves as freedom and adventure – our new design language, it is more broad-based and truly connects with our heritage of off-road go anywhere sort of vehicles- kind of something that everybody connects with.” Striving to stay ahead in the curve is important but at the same time she reiterates the need to, “dive deep and think far into the future.”
But how do you really define future in the world of automobile design? Elucidating the time horizon that the M&M design team is typically looking at, Kripa hints that it is hard to look for water-tight compartments. The 55-60 members “work on three or four areas. One is a far future, which is like a 2050- 30 years scenario where it rarely transforms to product. So it may remain at a sculptural level, or future scenario, building level, what would the world look like whether we will all be aliens, sort of the mood boards or scenario building setup or it could be sculptures. So it's a little more non-product and more vision that would sort of link to the language. One of the possibilities of evolution of language, there would be a closer scenario, which would be 20 years, which believe me for designers is a very close scenario. And then there will also be production design, they typically work on production design to take it to the single theme.”
Electric moves
In terms of influence of mega trends in automotive design, future electric mobility and autonomous vehicles take centre-stage. But how much do they really influence Mahindra’s design? Can we expect a radical evolution? Speaking rather candidly on the issue, Kripa says that “autonomous to me, seems far-fetched but I probably need to focus a little more in that area. However, electric mobility is here. And short-term in my view, we will not move away and do something radical, I think cars will look like cars and the interiors or electronics or lamps or aerodynamics, things like that would become much more efficient. So you would see a lot more technology in the car.”
According to her, “There are a lot of things happening in electronics and technology plays in the car. Long-term, it's very interesting.” As a designer, she feels that it “gives a lot of freedom in the frontal area of the car in terms of expression.” As she elaborates, the possibilities are immense – “the hood can be anywhere, the fenders could be anywhere, the facial definition can change, the wheels can go further out, to the corners, the pillars can move forward, you can release a lot of space, the interiors, vibration and noise become much less. Lots of people exploring in many directions and the winner will take it all. So it's again exciting.”
Making design walk the talk
Kripa connects designing with storytelling. No wonder the inspiration and the influences dictating that design language are crucial. Nature and animals have influenced M&M’s designs. Kripa adds that, “There will be other influences too. There are two aspects that we focus on in our passenger vehicles. One is with respect to volume – it has to be muscular and it has to be big. Even if it's a small footprint, it has to be visually big; it has to have these sections which are communicating power.”
The second aspect is the storytelling. “What is the expression? Is it dynamic, aggressive, fluid or aerodynamic? There will be the storytelling part of it, which in many cases may be inspired by nature and/or animals but it could be something else also. In the future, they could be tech influences too,” avers Kripa.
Like every good story, the anchor point is crucial. What is that distinguishing aspect that Kripa concentrates on in maintaining the narrative across forms, segments and even colours? A visibly excited Kripa’s eyes light up. She says, “As we move from ICE to electric, the space that we talk to or communicate to with the customer gains importance.”
She goes on to elaborate about the inspirations for the recently launched e-XUV, “We are moving from ICEs to electric mobility and we're using Asher’s flying geese as the inspiration. So if you look at the lower grille of the XUV 300, you'll have these arrows which are sort of crossing each other. That would be our transition phase from ICEs to electric and that would be true only to our electric vehicles in that transition phase, it will not be there in our conventional vehicles.” She adds that, “it could become a signature but our intent is to showcase that it's a transition phase.”
When you talk about M&M, it is difficult to just think about passenger vehicles only. Mahindra’s automotive offerings range from passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles to defence, construction equipment and farm vehicles. The tractor is as easily relatable to M&M as the e-XUV or the Atom or even the soon-to-be launched new Thar SUV. In fact, the Thar would be first product under the new evolved M&M design concept of ‘Freedom and adventure.’ On the commercial vehicle side too, the aspiration factor is acting as a catalyst in inducing a fresh lease of life in terms of designing. “We do need to get some cohesion across the portfolio and commercial vehicle lifecycles tend to be longer, but we eventually see that the entire portfolio is refreshed and made more contemporary and as you rightly pointed out, commercial vehicles also need to have be in that space. They're no longer those decrepit looking things – attention to details in terms of features and colours.”
But what really inspires the designer who is inspiring so many dreams and aspiration across the Mahindra Group and the customers of the brand? "Well, right now I'm looking at several artists – Milan Malik, a Pune-based water-colour artist and then Claude Monet, modern water-colour artists. I'm really inspired by their pattern works, their ability to experiment.”
In case you're wondering where water colour and automobile design converge, she explains: “It’s after all a car of x-size by y-size, it will have four/five people sitting in it, it's going to have so much power. How do you reinvent that? How do you how do you show that in a new light? How do you make that exciting? How do you connect to a bunch of people and bring something new to them in a formula that's existed for, you know, 120 years. I find both these people inspiring in that sense of just how creative they are with a limited palette.”
Does being a women help bring something unique to the table? Well, if you ask Kripa, she is a champion of ‘individual achievement’ – “Everyone brings value to the table. Whether you're a man or a woman, you are special, and you bring some value.” To her, what's always important is that the design teams need “to talk together to make sure that their philosophies are in a way that you could still create a distinctive vehicle and at the same time the base works.”