Tata Motors’ Pratap Bose wins 2018 World Industrial Design award

Pratap Bose, Tata Motors’ head of design, has bagged the prestigious ‘Top Chief Design Officer’ award at the 2nd World Industrial Design Conference held in Hangzhou, China on April 23, 2018. The award recognised Bose for his role to use design as an enabler for volume and market share gain for Tata Motors.

The award was hosted by the China Industrial Design Association, supported by UNIDO, the WDO(World Design Organisation), and China’s Central Ministry of Industries and Information Technology, which saw over 5,000 nomination entries from over 35 countries in the 10 Award Categories.

Bose’s journey with Tata Motors began in 2007, where he worked his way up and was appointed Head of Design in 2011. Since then, he has been spearheading the design for cars, trucks and buses for Tata Motors, across the three in-house design centres (Pune in India, Turin in Italy and Tata Motors European Technical Centre in the UK).

Bose, who completed his graduation from the National Institute of Design in 1998, began his automotive career in 1999 as a designer with Italian two-wheeler maker Piaggio. In 2001, he joined the Royal College of Art, UK after completing his studies. Two years later, he joined Daimler Chrysler, Japan where he had a five-year stint.

In a company blog, while mentioning the success of the Tata Tigor sedan, Bose had said that it is a very important milestone in the journey for Tata Motors' design. A clean sheet of paper had given the designers the freedom and opportunity to create a new body style – the styleback. For a segment that was peppered with drab and boring-looking, hatchback-derived compact sedans and large hatches, it was important to make a dramatic change, one that would capture attention.

Tata Motors, which is showing its new and aggressive face, both in the passenger vehicle and commercial vehicle markets, has been drawing a lot of attention for its striking product design in the recent past. Whether it is the striking-looking clutch of cars like the Tigor, Tiago, Hexa, the game-changing Nexon, or the just-launched Ultra range of intermediate LCVs, the company’s product design has become a talking point in automotive circles.

In FY2018, Tata Motors sold a total of 210,200 PVs, which is a year-on-year growth of 21.85 percent, and 376,456 CVs, a YoY increase of 23.18 percent. Having embarked on an aggressive transformational journey, it is already seeing an uptick in its market share.  

Photos: Pratap Bose/Twitter

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