ValueLabs - Creative Executive of the Year

Company: ValueLabs, Hyderabad
Company Description: ValueLabs is a global technology company focused on Product Development, Data Technology, and Digital services. Powered by The Digital Flywheel™, they provide end-to-end solutions in the fields of Customer Experience, Data & Analytics, Product Development, and Automation.
Nomination Category: Creative Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Creative Executive of the Year

Nomination Title: Kadambari Sahu

Kadambari is a Design Leader working as SVP at ValueLabs. She is part of initiatives working passionately to promote good design practices that bring innovation and inclusivity to impact business and society positively.

Challenged by racist and sexist comments, Kadambari made sure that she would change people's mindsets. She has also talked on the same topic at World-Class-Designer Conference 2020 titled "Challenging stereotypes." As the co-chair for Interaction awards 2022, she is weaving a vision to create inclusive and equitable awards.

Appointed as Head of Design for ValueLabs, she started working towards changing mindset by building a great business and design Practice. She built an inclusive team inculcating confidence that they were not less than anyone and worked towards decolonizing the mindsets prevalent in her surroundings, believing that good Design comes only from developed nations, and as Indians they lacked originality and creativity.

She instilled confidence in leadership, stakeholders, and clients of ValueLabs that her team can deliver best-in-class Design. To create such World-class-design she coached, mentored, worked alongside, and created opportunities for designers to learn continuously and stay ahead of the competition. She encouraged experimentation and built vision, processes, frameworks that have become a standard high-quality process tested and continuously updated to create best-in-class experiences.

Led by Kadambari, the team has worked on challenging projects that they bagged by showcasing excellent design strategies to the client, pitching broad vision and micro details against beautifying the UI. With solid design evangelism, persistence, and designing alongside, she was able to bring about a positive impact in each of the projects. It was not an easy task, as design teams are often viewed as the team, creating pretty interfaces and projects constrained by tight budgets. With the demonstration of the business value of Design through multiple channels like talks, customized workshops, Immersive Exhibitions, and many other mediums, she was able to change the perspective of Design from being a discipline of beautification to a discipline that can build a great business. This change in perspective echoed in the growth of the business. Per project, growth was approximately increased by 1800%. The users' positive experience with new designs and overall positive response from business stakeholders created a trust to work again and recommend more business.

Kadambari, while confident of the designs produced in her team, wanted to make sure that they were getting validated from external sources and applied for awards to get critique and feedback from international experts. The result was that designs won internationally, and to date, from 2019, She and her team have amassed 126 awards winning some prestigious awards like Good Design, Communication Arts, and many others. They were named the #3 leading agency of the year 2021 by Muse Awards.

Kadambari leveraged her position at ValueLabs to positively impact the Design Community by hosting World Interaction Design Day 2019 at Hyderabad. In 2020, She Founded the Design Inspire Platform. Started first as Design Talk series, it has expanded to a larger platform that includes Lectures, Fellowship, Apprenticeship, Designathon, Conference, and graduate awards for encouraging young designers in 2022. The platform has a clear vision of providing free and accessible design education that focuses on mindset, thoughts, and capacity. It also wants to create opportunities for the design community. Kadambari believes that by elevating design awareness and promoting good design practices, society will be positively impacted, and Design Inspire is the manifestation of that belief.

She has been an innovator at heart and loves to experiment and push the envelope of possibilities. While creating teams and creative culture is her leadership forte, she is a hands-on designer. She founded Sniffing out the differences collective, a research group of diverse like-minded innovators who work on novel interaction design projects. The first project was on olfactory interfaces and has won 18 international awards, including Red dot. Kadambari is experimenting with newer multisensory projects that include food, emotions, media, and AI.

-2019-2021,grew the Design Practiceto 1043%andincreasedPer project growth to 1800%.
-RebrandedValueLabs, winning 15+ international award,bringing visibilityandclarity toValueLabsofferings
-In2019,the practice was namedIndia's Best In-house Design Team, andin2021, #3 in Muse Leading Agency of the yearinternationally.
-FoundedDesign Inspire platform,won30+ awards.
-Founded and continued to buildSniffing out the differences collective winning 18 awards and continues to build novel interfaces
-Cochair for Interaction awards 2022 byIxDAto build inclusive and equitable awards.
-GaveDesign talks on international fora such as World-Class-Designer-Conference20,Interaction 20, many others
-Jury memberoninternational Designand business awards such as IBDSA, Women in businessStevieawards, Muse awards,etc.