The 25th CII Global Design Summit 2025 marks a pivotal moment in India’s design narrative. Celebrating its Silver Jubilee edition, this landmark event arrives at a critical juncture when design is being repositioned as a fundamental driver of economic growth, social development, and environmental sustainability. Scheduled for 26-27 November 2025 at Hotel Taj in Bengaluru, the summit represents the culmination of 25 years of strategic advocacy by the Confederation of Indian Industry to establish design as a cornerstone of national competitiveness.
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A Movement Championing Design
The thematic framework “People, Planet, Purpose, Profitability” signals a fundamental shift in how design is understood within Indian industry and policy ecosystems. The summit frames design as an integrated force capable of addressing existential challenges while simultaneously driving economic expansion.
This positioning is particularly significant given the broader context of India’s creative economy. The nation’s creative sector, valued at approximately $36.2 billion in 2019 and generating $121 billion in exports, now contributes nearly 8% of total employment and over 20% of the nation’s Gross Value Added. These figures place India ahead of developed nations like Australia (2.1% employment share), South Korea (1.9%), and Mexico (1.5%) in terms of creative workforce concentration. The 25th Design Summit arrives as this economic segment experiences accelerated growth, with creative exports rising by 20% in 2023 alone.
Institutional Leadership and Global Recognition
The summit’s significance is amplified by the leadership within India’s design establishment. Prof. Pradyumna Vyas, Senior Advisor for Design Promotion and Innovation at CII, has just been elected as the 2025-2027 President of the World Design Organization (WDO)—a historic first for India.
With over 35 years of professional and academic experience, Prof. Vyas brings extensive credentials to this global role. His tenure as Director of the National Institute of Design (2009-2019) coincided with NID’s transformation into an Institute of National Importance through an Act of Parliament. His role in establishing the India Design Mark in collaboration with Japan’s Institute of Design Promotion has created a benchmarking system comparable to international standards like Germany’s prestigious Good Design Award.
Thematic Architecture: Seven Dynamic Focus Tracks
The summit’s seven thematic focus tracks reveal the breadth of design’s application across contemporary challenges and opportunities:
Designing for 8 Billion: Creative Economies and Global Impact targets the intersection of design thinking and inclusive economic growth. This track acknowledges that design’s greatest value lies in its capacity to create solutions accessible to billions rather than exclusive minorities. It speaks directly to India’s context, where over 600 million people are projected to live in cities within the coming decade, requiring innovative approaches to urban infrastructure, services, and sustainable consumption.
Intelligence by Design: AI, Data & Ethics addresses the most pressing concern in contemporary technology adoption. As artificial intelligence systems become increasingly embedded in consumer products and business processes, the ethical dimension becomes paramount. Design’s role here transcends user interface concerns to encompass the governance frameworks, transparency mechanisms, and fairness criteria that determine whether AI systems serve humanity or reproduce historical biases. This track recognizes that ethical AI in 2025 is no longer aspirational but constitutes essential business strategy.
From Waste to Wonder: Designing for Sustainability directly engages with India’s ambitious circular economy transition. By 2050, India’s circular economy is projected to generate $2 trillion in market value and create 10 million jobs. The government’s Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) initiatives have already registered over 51,000 producers and 2,600 plastic waste processors, with more than 157 lakh tonnes of plastic packaging waste recycled since February 2022. This track addresses the design implications of this systemic shift, from product conceptualization through end-of-life management.
Future Mobility & Smart Materials encompasses India’s advancement in Urban Air Mobility and advanced transportation solutions. India’s commitment to developing indigenous eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft represents a critical convergence of aerospace design, electrification, and systems engineering—all of which demand innovative design approaches. This mirrors global trends while situating India’s development within self-reliance frameworks aligned with the “Make in India” initiative.
Horizons Beyond Earth: Aerospace & Defence Design reflects India’s growing ambitions in space exploration and defence innovation. This track signals recognition that design excellence in these sectors positions India as a technological leader capable of competing globally in high-stakes industries.
Threads of Change: Fashion, Lifestyle & Jewellery celebrates India’s heritage crafts while acknowledging their contemporary evolution. The Indian gem and jewellery industry, valued at over $80 billion, has experienced steady growth powered by escalating global interest in traditional craftsmanship. The market is simultaneously experiencing demographic shifts, with younger consumers seeking lab-grown diamonds and personalized pieces reflecting individual identity rather than purely ceremonial function. Meanwhile, luxury brands like Sabyasachi have successfully positioned Indian heritage craftsmanship on global luxury stages, such as Bergdorf Goodman in New York.
Shaping Cities of Tomorrow: Urban Innovation & Growth directly addresses India’s urbanization trajectory. With sustainable urban design emerging as a critical field, this track explores how design can create livable, inclusive, and ecologically balanced cities. The focus on “smart materials” and technological integration reflects the necessity of combining heritage urban planning principles with contemporary digital infrastructure.
Design Policy and Strategic Recognition
Beyond the summit itself, the event will feature the release of the CII India Design Policy 2025—a critical policy instrument that attempts to update India’s 2007 National Design Policy for contemporary realities. The 2024 Design Policy Communiqué already expanded the policy landscape to include emerging domains such as user experience design, service design, and sustainability integration. However, the 2025 update signals recognition that design policy must move beyond sectoral concerns to address governance complexity, digital inequality, and cultural transitions affecting the entire nation.
Awards and Recognition: Design Excellence Beyond Markets
The summit will conclude with the felicitation of CII Design Excellence Awards 2025 winners, with award announcements occurring on 26 November 2025. These awards, administered since 2025 with launching in February of that year, recognize exemplary work across product, system, service, and interaction design. Previous iterations have honored designs ranging from communication systems to spatial interventions, from automotive innovation to digital solutions, establishing benchmarks for nationally recognized design excellence.
Awarded products and services receive the prestigious Award Insignia for use in promotional materials and packaging, complimentary exhibition space at the Design Summit, and featured placement on the CII Design Portal. Winners receive institutional recognition alongside practical commercial benefits, a model designed to incentivize design excellence while creating visible markers of achievement within India’s professional design community.
International Pavilion: Global Design Convergence
The International Pavilion represents a critical structural element distinguishing this summit from purely national design conversations. By creating a dedicated space for global design showcases, CII positions Indian design practitioners and enterprises within international contexts while attracting foreign participation and investment.
Target Audience and Ecosystem Engagement
The summit explicitly targets diverse stakeholder categories. Industry leaders and CEOs seeking to integrate design-led innovation; industrial designers and creative professionals shaping products and services; educators and students from design institutions; entrepreneurs and startup founders; investors and venture capitalists evaluating design-driven companies; government stakeholders and policy experts; and international delegates together constitute an ecosystem spanning the entire design value chain.
Experiential Learning and Industry Engagement
Moving beyond traditional conference formats, the summit emphasizes experiential learning through B2B networking sessions, design sprints, live product demonstrations, and exclusive industry visits to cutting-edge design and innovation centres. This pedagogical shift from passive knowledge consumption to active participation recognizes that design learning occurs optimally through engagement with real-world challenges and practitioners.
The industrial tours component carries particular significance. By providing direct access to design and innovation facilities, the summit bridges the gap between theoretical design principles discussed in panel sessions and the pragmatic constraints, workflows, and iterative processes characterizing actual design practice in Indian enterprises.
Design Leadership in a Transformative Moment
The 25th CII Global Design Summit arrives at a juncture when design’s role is being fundamentally reconceived across sectors and geographies. India’s positioning within this transformation reflects both the nation’s accumulated creative capacity and the urgent challenges demanding innovative solutions, from sustainable urban development to ethical artificial intelligence integration, from circular economy design to advanced mobility systems.
For India’s design community, practitioners, educators, and policy stakeholders, the summit represents an inflection point. As Prof. Pradyumna Vyas assumes global leadership of the World Design Organization, and as India’s creative economy demonstrates double-digit growth, the 25th Design Summit validates design’s transition from peripheral aesthetic concern to central strategic imperative. The summit’s motto—“Design in India. Design for the World”—captures this dual positioning: celebrating India’s distinctive design heritage while asserting its capacity to contribute meaningfully to global design challenges.
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