Design Value Index by the Design Management Institute states that design-led companies have outperformed the S&P 500 by 219% over 10 years, highlighting the long-term impact of strategic design thinking.
Design firms across the globe in the middle of a quiet but significant transformation. For years, design was largely treated as a service function something commissioned at the end of a strategic process to make the output look presentable. That is changing. Businesses are increasingly recognising design as a strategic capability, and design studios best positioned to grow are those that have been building toward that recognition all along.
Pune’s Hashtag Designs is one of those studios. And the direction it is headed reflects a clear-eyed understanding of where the opportunity in Indian design is moving.
“The studios that will matter in the next five years are not the ones that can produce the most work the fastest,” says Madhushree Kulkarni, founder of Hashtag Designs. “They are the ones that can demonstrate a measurable connection between design decisions and business outcomes. That shift from design as aesthetics to design as strategy is already happening among the most sophisticated clients. It will become mainstream faster than most people expect.”
The Indian market presents specific opportunities that are unlike those in more mature design economies. A massive middle-class consumer base that is increasingly brand-literate. A startup ecosystem that is maturing from its first generation of growth into a second generation that is more thoughtful about positioning and differentiation. A D2C sector that is finally grappling with the limits of performance marketing and looking for longer-lasting brand equity.
Each of these trends creates demand for a different kind of design studio one that can sit at the intersection of brand strategy, user experience, and visual craft, and bring all three to bear on the same problem simultaneously. That is precisely the space Hashtag Designs has been building toward.
Madhushree Kulkarni is also direct about the challenges. “The Indian market still underprices design,” she says. “There is a persistent belief that good design should cost very little, which is partly a legacy of treating it as a commodity service. Changing that requires not just better communication from studios about the value of what they do, but visible proof case studies, outcomes, business results that can be directly connected to design decisions. That is the work we are focused on building.”
The studio is also investing in developing the depth of its methodology. The processes that distinguish Hashtag Designs the discovery phase, the brand system approach, the integration of UX and brand thinking are being documented, refined, and made more transferable. The goal is a studio that can scale its thinking without losing the quality of its output.
For Madhushree Kulkarni, the future is not about getting bigger for its own sake. It is about becoming more useful to more clients, in more complex situations, at higher levels of impact.
“We want to be the studio that clients call when the problem is hard,” she says. “Not the easiest option, not the fastest, but the one that can be trusted to understand the problem properly and solve it in a way that actually holds up. That is a very specific kind of reputation to build. But it is the one worth building.”
What gives Madhushree Kulkarni confidence is not a prediction about the market it is the quality of thinking the studio has developed over years of honest, difficult, and rewarding work. The future of design in India will be written by studios that built something real. Hashtag Designs intends to be one of them.
As India’s design ecosystem evolves, the studios that will lead are not the ones chasing volume, but those driving measurable business impact through strategy, clarity, and experience. Brands that invest in this shift will build stronger differentiation and long-term growth.
If your business is ready to work with a studio that treats design as a strategic advantage, not just visual appeal, visit Hashtag Designs and discover how thoughtful branding can shape your future.
