Parmesh Shahani dropped out of his doctorate studies in the United States a few years ago to return to his home city of Mumbai to launch a project merging the corporate and cultural worlds.
Mr Shahani, now 38, had previously worked in venture capital and in fashion journalism. He was inspired by those varying experiences and had an epiphany when he was selected as a TED fellow and attended the 2009 edition of the annual conference, which has the slogan “Ideas worth spreading”.
“I thought, why does something like this have to happen once a year?” Mr Shahani says. “Why can it not be specifically about India? Because I think India more than ever needs these kinds of cross pollination playgrounds. A lot of everything we do is in silos. Business operates in silos. Academia operates in its own bubble. The creative industries take place in their own bubbles. It’s very rare that these linkages happen between them and once these linkages happen maybe understanding and connections and solutions will come out.”
On his return to India, he talked to business leaders about his aim to create a cultural and intellectual space within a corporation. It was Nisa Godrej, an executive director at one of India’s biggest conglomerates, Godrej Group, who grasped Mr Shahani’s idea and offered him the opportunity to set up what would become the Godrej India Culture Lab at their headquarters in Mumbai.
The lab, which launched in 2011, includes regular talks, music and art events, as well as film and book club meetings with filmmakers and authors in attendance. The events are offered free to the company’s employees and members of the public. It has hosted more than 200 events since its launch, including talks by Kenya Hara, a famous Japanese designer and art director at the retail brand Muji, and Devdutt Pattanaik, an Indian author and leadership consultant.
The project describes itself as “an experimental space … to explore what it means to be modern and Indian”.
Godrej, which is still a family business, was established in 1897, starting out as a company which made soaps. Over the years it grew and today has diversified interests in sectors ranging from property to retail to industrial engineering.
Kyle D’Lyma, 29, an assistant manager at Godrej Consumer Products, says that he tries to attend the events whenever he can make them, depending on his workload, and that he finds the lab to be “inspirational”.
“I learn more about India than I normally would,” he says. “It exposes you to a lot more people. It goes beyond your job.”
As well as offering employees an opportunity to socialise with their colleagues, they also build new contacts through the events, he explains.
Vrunda Pathare, 35, an archivist at Godrej and Boyce, says that she enjoys regularly attending the events, with one of the main advantages being that most of them are held on-site at the headquarters. “It actually helps me in my work because it gives me a broader perspective,” she says. “This is my way of learning after academia. We see what’s happening around us and connect with people and listen to people.”
Mr Shahani explains that businesses should offer opportunities for their employees to develop intellectual and cultural knowledge.
“I think knowledge creation is changing,” says Mr Shahani, who still runs the Godrej India Culture Lab as he works more broadly on innovation at the company. “Earlier knowledge used to be something that sits in universities and kind of this ivory tower of academia, whereas through experiments like this we’re realising that knowledge can be produced in different settings, so why can’t a corporate campus in a sense be a space to generate different kinds of knowledge?”
The project has also helped attract talent to the company, he adds.
“People have come to our cultural events and applied for a job and got hired.”
Companies have approached Godrej expressing interest in starting similar initiatives.
“It’s not rocket science but it needs commitment,” Mr Shahani says. “A lot of other companies start but then it fizzles out because they don’t consistently push things through.”
He hopes that corporations will increasingly realise the advantages of removing the boundaries between business and arts and culture.
“I believe that the corporate world can really, really shift the needle,” he says. “In India, corporations are doing a lot of incredible work in improving society. It could be through philanthropy but it could also be through creating these innovative systems where people can come and flourish and produce ideas that can then be radical.”
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