Radha Kapoor Khanna’s Journey of Setting up 1st School of Design & Innovation in Mumbai

The era of design, fashion, art, and innovation has evolved with more and more students choosing these as a career. The world of design and innovation has changed and is welcoming fresh talent with open arms. Adhering to the proper study of fashion and innovation trends, many analytical tools are deployed in this business. Radha Kapoor Khanna, a creative entrepreneur and the lady who set up the first design and innovation school in Mumbai with her alma matar Parson School of Design, shares her inspirational journey of establishing this university. Radha Kapoor Khanna, with a creative career on the rise, felt an urgent need for an ecosystem that provides young India with skills to make them future-ready.
Who is Radha Kapoor Khanna?
Radha Kapoor is an Indian businesswoman, entrepreneur and the founder of Indian Scool of Design & Innovation (ISDI Mumbai). Radha Kapoor Khanna is the elder daughter of famous Indian banker Rana Kapoor who was the CEO and MD of Yes Bank.
Rather than following in their father’s footsteps, billionaire banker Rana Kapoor’s daughters decided to take the startups route to grow their money. Radha Kapoor Khanna, 34, the eldest, founded The Three Sisters: Institutional Office (TTS:IO), a family office, in 2013 to invest in and incubate businesses across a range of fields from education and sports to media-entertainment and retail.
The cognitive development of human mind is centered around a lot of factors. Right from the early childhood days, the brain starts to develop and learn new things. Radha Kapoor Khanna, a creative entrepreneur, explains in brief the concept of learning through play, and what advantages does the concept have.
The creative entrepreneur Radha Kapoor Khanna states, “Every child is unique, and hence the child’s interests must be considered while creating learning goals, as research has shown that brain development is most important between the ages of birth and five. Consequently, when children engage in play, their minds form connections that lead to a child’s overall beneficial development. Radha Kapoor informs, “Experiential learning includes hands-on learning, arts-integrated &sports-integrated education
One of India’s top design and innovation colleges, ISDI offers cutting-edge and innovation-focused programmes based on extensive specialisation built on solid liberal arts fundamentals, critical observation, disruptive design thinking, creating emerging technologies, master workshops, and industry-academia collaborations. ISDI gives students the tools they need to fully tap into their creativity, use design to advance society and the economy, and use innovation to build sustainable solutions. Graduates of ISDI go on to become design leaders who tackle real-world problems by juggling technical proficiency, inventiveness, and contextual awareness with human sensitivity.
Design by its own nature is creative, collaborative, multidisciplinary and inclusive of many other fields, Radha Kapoor Khanna believes that strategy in the context of a country like India can play a very significant role in finding appropriate solutions to its problems. The design process involves knowledge gathering, analysis, discovery, and conceptualisation resulting in a problem-solving activity and this, in turn, leads to experiential learning.
“Indian economy can benefit from design and innovation. It can aid in the learning of societal behaviours, empathy for consumers and tackling real-world challenges,” says Radha Kapoor Khanna.
In today’s world, which is changing quickly and posing economic challenges, new models can be derived from design and innovation. We need confident, creative and nimble thinkers who can navigate circuitous complexity. Indian School of Design and Innovation is definitely the change maker of the Indian education system.
Entrepreneur Radha Kapoor Khanna on luxury in India and her venture, Ladies Who Lead
In a fashionscape often considered to be tricky and impenetrable – what does it take for a fresh idea to become a reality? We’d say a nurturing atmosphere, being educated about the market and the right kind of mentorship; Radha Kapoor Khanna, entrepreneur and fashionista, has placed herself amidst challenges to find solutions for precisely these problems. Whether it’s making investments in budding businesses in India or merging different disciplines of design with innovation, Khanna has a keen eye assimilating talent into the mainstream market and help it grow. Daughter of Rana Kapoor (MD and CEO, Yes Bank), Radha always wanted to veer away from the usual and did her studies in fine arts from The University of Arts, London and Parsons School of Design, New York. It was here that she realized how interdependent different fields of business, innovation, and design are. She also got to understand how a world-class ecosystem can be created to harness design thinking.