Dinesh Himatsingka
Profile: Founder and Managing Director, Himatsingka Seide
His Insights:
• Design can be appreciated only when we are aware of the idea of beauty
• There is nothing called Indian design. There is only good design. Design has no nationality.
We are driving to Dodaballapur, a little over 40 kilometres beyond the hubbub of Bangalore city’s IT sprawl; the road winds through vineyards and hamlets that will one day give way to ‘development’. For now, it is still serene, basking in the winter sun of early December.
I am in the car with Dinesh Himatsingka, a reticent man in his early sixties. He makes for an unlikely candidate to be India’s leading exporter of high-quality, high-priced drapery to discerning buyers in Europe and the United States. He makes it for the rich and says he’d rather make money off them. His company Himatsingka Seide’s turnover is around Rs. 1,200 crore, but his is not the usual Indian textile exports story. Dinesh Himatsingka is a worshipper of design and in his products the design rules the form.
As we ride the distance, I sense he is somewhat distracted and I probe deeper. It turns out that in faraway Kolkata, his 101-year-old father has been suddenly taken unwell. The man has been a lawyer of great standing, who has appeared in court until just five years ago. I offer to cancel the conversation; we are close to the airport and I suggest he take the flight to be at his father’s side. Dinesh suddenly comes out of his distraction and says, no, his father would not approve of that at all. Let us talk, he says. In that moment, I understand the meaning of work ethic and what makes some of us what we are.
On the paternal side, Dinesh comes from Bhagalpur in Bihar. During his early days and subsequent trips, he was taken by the work of the weavers of that region. In the warp and weft of the artisans, he saw his own passion and also found his pain.
The passion came from an intuitive, unexplainable draw from the thread. The pain emanated from the fact that over and over again, the weavers were repeating the same designs and their artisanship was falling short of art; as long as the buyer, seller, the intermediaries and the workers made some money, no one questioned why design should not question pattern. Dinesh started asking the weavers to weave his designs. Then he took them to his buyers. In 1985, a chance introduction to an Italian architect got him thinking.
Dinesh agrees: “Design can be appreciated only when we are aware of the idea of beauty. But of course, beauty is the biggest force! We are attracted first and most by beauty. We are hard-wired that way. Physical beauty. Natural beauty. Intellectual beauty. Artistic beauty. Beauty in literature. Scientific beauty. Creative beauty. Beauty of innovations. Beauty through Design. The list goes on. Everything, in my opinion, begins and ends with it!”
(This story appears in the 20 January, 2012 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
"Just look at the dismal investment in design! In a country of a billion people, there is only one National Institute of Design." For your information : Now almost all major IITs have design schools. IIT Guwahati (Department of Design) and IIT Bombay (Industrial Design Centre) has been pioneer in this field for a long time time now.
on Jan 27, 2012Kamaljeet, you are right but what he meant in the conversation is that a dedicated institution like NID has been a lone star. He believes we need many such and his sense is that it would take at least 400-500 crores to build another such great instituion and the opportunity (to create design in many fields) is becokoning; he feels we are losing time because, as a nation, we under appreciate the concept of design and the time to act is now.
on Jan 27, 2012