BOSEMAN

Meet Bombay born and bred, Pratap Bose, 45, Vice President, Global Design, Tata Motors. Bose is the man responsible for transforming the design language of passenger vehicles manufactured at their plants with his design leadership, and he has also played a big role in further elevating the company's brand perception in the minds of people, while making their vehicles even more desirable. We asked the doyen of design to enlighten us by telling us about what exactly constitutes good design. “Good design, while having an aesthetic and functional element to it, at its core, answers a question that people themselves aren’t aware of yet. Good design is about anticipating what someone else would need. Did you think, you would need an iPad in your life? No USB, no CD, no keyboard also. They [Apple] answered a question, you didn’t even know you wanted to ask. I think that is good design,” says Bose. It was good design in the form of a beautiful blue Mercedes 280 SEL, standing in front of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, at Apollo Bunder, in Mumbai, that sparked off Bose’s interest in car design as a school kid. “I don’t know what it was, it was this sort of magic moment, the