Automobile designer Dilip Chhabria nurtures global ambitions, wants to go mass-market in India and diversify into areas like furniture, refrigerators and television
Dilip Chhabria was recently approached by a Hyderabad real estate developer who wanted India’s best-known automobile designer to come up with home theatres for the Rs 15-crore villas he is building in the city. The brief was to design post-modern television and speakers — something that would fit in well with the deluxe surroundings. So pleased is Chhabria with the results that he has put together a team of 20 to look at opportunities in this area.
But what’s a car designer doing with televisions? “I want to pander to the human psyche to deliver change. Whatever we do, it should be from a global point of view at Indian costs. That’s my vision,” says Chhabria. Shorn of the jargon, it means that Chhabria wants to sell designs abroad because he can do it cheaper. It also shows that Chhabria has opened another source of revenue and diversified his risks.
From designing cars for people with deep pockets, Chhabria has come a long way. He has done buses, motorcycles and even helicopter interiors. He has begun to do office and home interiors, furniture, refrigerators and now televisions also. Interiors, he is confident, will account for almost 30 per cent of his business in the next few years. Just how big is Chhabria? His DC Design is closely held. So, its financials are not in the public domain. Some of his friends say that it could be around Rs 50 crore in size. Chhabria of course is tightlipped about it. “People always perceive us to be far bigger than we are, and it ends up hurting investors.” But he does admit that his gross profit margins could be as high as 30 per cent. Not bad at all.
As a child, much of Chhabria’s time was spent sketching cars. This fascination led him to the Automotive Art School at Pasadena in the US. After a short stint at General Motors, Chhabria returned to India and used his father’s business infrastructure to design car parts. Around that time, Mahindra & Mahindra wanted to upgrade the design of its SUV called the Armada. The company was happy with his work and pushed him to start his own design consultancy. Thus was born DC Design in 1993. “Mahindra & Mahindra promised me I’d always have business,” Chhabria laughs.
Seventeen years later, Chhabria can boast of a whole lot of customers like Tata Motors, BMW and General Motors. He has also worked for top lawyer Rohit Kocchar, businessman Adi Godrej and Bollywood superstars Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan and Ajay Devgan. On the non-auto side, he has designed for Coca-Cola and Videocon. Aware that the business is driven solely by him and that he needs to build an institution that outlives him, Chhabria has set up with the DY Patil group the DYP-DC Centre for Automotive Research and Studies at Pune. Growth has been rapid. In 1993, the company had eight employees on its rolls and came out with just two cars. Today, Chhabria has 450 people working for him, who churn out 250 unique cars a year. Next year he hopes to increase that number to 600.
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