Krish Patel is a fourth-semester B.Design student in Interior and Furniture Design.
He walked visitors through the Interior Design exhibition at VFDF 2026. When asked why he chose the field, he described his fascination with Indian palace architecture, with royalty not as aesthetic choice but as an intentional design philosophy, and with the forts and haveli structures he had seen growing up.
“When I looked at the old palaces, the forts, the haveli structures, I felt something pull me toward understanding how those spaces worked, how they were planned, and what made them so powerful. My main aim, ultimately, is to design spaces that give people comfort.”
His second sentence is more important than the first. The palaces caught his imagination. The comfort is what he wants to produce.
He described the kind of person he designs for as someone who works hard all day and comes home wanting a place that truly feels like their own. That combination of visual ambition and user-centred purpose is what makes an interior designer rather than a decorator.
Read more: Interior and Furniture Design at Parul Institute of Design with Actual Teaching.
Siddharth Yavaley: A Three-Legged Dog and the Beginning of Empathy
Siddharth Yavaley is a fourth-semester student who walked visitors through the Product Design exhibition.
His story of how he came to design is the most striking of the five. When he was young, he encountered a dog that had lost one of its legs. The dog limped. It was struggling with every step, clearly suffering, but still trying to move through the world as best it could. Siddharth found it unbearable to watch.
He went home and searched for prosthetic legs for dogs.
- He found that several products existed, but none were affordable or accessible in India.
- Determined to do something, he cobbled together whatever materials he could find.
- He attempted to build the dog an artificial leg himself.
- The leg he built was imperfect, but the experience was revelatory.
He realised at that moment that his instinct to look at a problem and immediately begin thinking about how to solve it was something real, something worth developing. That dog, that moment of helplessness that turned into action, was what brought Siddharth to Product Design at the Parul Institute of Design.
The story matters because product design at its core is empathy applied to form. A designer who cannot feel a user’s struggle cannot produce objects that solve it. Siddharth arrived at the discipline with empathy already functioning. The curriculum’s job is to add the technical vocabulary, the material science, and the prototyping discipline on top of it.
Read more: B.Design Product Design at Parul Institute of Design
Jemit: Mechanical Engineering, Graphic Design, and the Art of Decoding Clients
Jemit is a diploma semester four student from a different background than his peers.
He studied mechanical engineering and also practised graphic design. What drew him to interior design was his curiosity about skin, shape, proportion, and requirement. He understood both the technical and aesthetic dimensions of the discipline instinctively.
His sharpest observation during the exhibition was about clients. Clients and users come to designers asking for spaces they cannot themselves explain. The interior designer has a single shot to make that blurry imagined space come into existence, exactly as requested.
“Combining two slabs of wood and a rope can make a chair. To design it in a way that it looks appealing and is functional at the same time, that is the task.”
The framing is mature. Design, for Jemit, is decoding. The client does not always know what they want. The designer has to read between the lines of what is said, what is avoided, and what is implied.
This skill, which no classroom can directly teach, is what Jemit has brought to the programme from his mixed background. It is also exactly the skill Anvi Chanodia used to pass the Livspace interview’s three-year-old design challenge.
Read More: Design Placements at Parul University
Ovi Kelesar: A Lifelong Problem-Solver
Ovi Kelesar designed the trivet displayed at the Product Design section.
Her reason for choosing the discipline goes back to tenth grade. She had been naturally drawn to noticing small, everyday problems that most people simply learn to live with. Inconveniences. Inefficiencies. Small sources of daily frustration that nobody had yet thought to fix.
When she found a product design course at Parul Institute of Design, she finally had the platform and the tools to act on those observations.
Her trivet is the product of that mindset. It is not a grand technological breakthrough. It is a thoughtful, human-centred response to a real and common problem from the household that nobody really gives thought to. A hot pad that can open into three parts to accommodate larger utensils, reduce clutter in the kitchen, and protect counter surfaces from heat.
The object is quiet. The thinking behind it is the point.
Ruchi Natbhanjan: Following a Mother's Creativity
Ruchi Natbhanjan is a fashion design student who walked visitors through the Fashion Design exhibition.
Her path into the discipline began with her mother. Her mother worked with textiles and made things. Growing up watching that work instilled in Ruchi a quiet but persistent desire to do the same, to make things with her hands, to work with fabric and colour and texture, to express something through what she created.
Ruchi came to the Parul Institute of Design to develop her creativity in a structured, rigorous, and inspiring environment, and to eventually carry forward and expand what she had already begun absorbing simply by watching her mother.
Her articulate views on psychology in design, on the difficulty of communicating with clients who cannot describe what they want, and on the responsibility of keeping disappearing textile traditions alive all trace back to the same foundation: watching a mother make things.
Read more: Workshops at the Parul Institute of Design.
What These Five Motivations Have in Common
None of the five students came to design because they scored below a cut-off in another discipline. None came because they liked to draw and were told they should.
Each arrived with a specific, narratable, checkable motivation.
- Palace architecture for Krish.
- A three-legged dog for Siddharth.
- A mechanical engineer’s eye for irony for Jemit.
- A tenth-grade problem-solver’s pattern recognition for Ovi.
- A mother’s creative practice for Ruchi.
The specificity is what produces the follow-through.
The admissions advice implicit in these five stories is simple. A prospective student considering B.Design at Parul Institute of Design should ask themselves what specific moment, object, person, or frustration is pulling them toward the discipline. If the answer is vague, the student will likely struggle. If the answer is specific, the programme will build on it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do students choose design as a career in India?
Motivations vary widely. Students interviewed at Parul Institute of Design in 2026 cited specific reasons including fascination with architectural heritage, early experience with a problem that needed solving, a family member practising a creative discipline, and a cross-disciplinary background bringing unusual perspective. The common factor across strong design students is a specific motivating reference point rather than a generic interest.
Do I need to be able to draw to study B.Design at Parul University?
Drawing ability helps but is not the filter. The B.Design programme teaches technical drawing skills including working drawings as part of the core curriculum. More important than current drawing ability is the ability to observe, reason about users and spaces, and work through iterative problem-solving. The PU-DAT entrance evaluates design aptitude broadly, not drawing skill alone.
Can students from non-design backgrounds succeed in B.Design?
Yes. Jemit at Parul Institute of Design came from a mechanical engineering background and brought both technical fluency and a different perspective to interior design. Students with backgrounds in science, commerce, and arts have all built strong portfolios through the programme. Cross-disciplinary background is often an advantage rather than a disadvantage.
What is the best reason to choose B.Design over a more traditional degree?
Design is chosen correctly when the student has a specific motivation that ties them to the discipline. It is chosen incorrectly when the student is primarily avoiding engineering or medicine. Students like Krish, Siddharth, Ovi, Jemit, and Ruchi chose the programme because it matched something specific they already cared about.
How do students discover their specific motivation for design?
By paying attention to what consistently interests them before they think about careers. Krish looked at palaces. Siddharth noticed the three-legged dog. Ovi had been noticing household problems since tenth grade. Ruchi watched her mother work. The motivation is usually already present by late adolescence. The student's job is to notice it. The design programme's job is to build on it.
