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Managing Partner and Co-Founder at NYUCT Design Labs, Pranali has been a multidisciplinary practitioner intersecting art, culture and design. An alumnus of the prestigious Sir JJ School of Arts, she leads the design cell at Edible Ventures.
Prior to co-founding NYUCT Design Labs, Pranali was a co-founding member at Saffron Art, the global platform for art in India and which revolutionized art e-commerce in the country. This was followed up by decades of experience in building up institutional and private art collections for reputed MNCs (Rabo Bank Mumbai, Morgan Stanley – NY Broadway Office, Aicon Art Gallery – NY, ABN Amro, Mumbai, Citi Bank, Mumbai), private collectors and luxury hospitality chains. She was part of the Art Appraisal & Restoration Consultancy for Taj Mahal Mumbai for their Centenary year celebrations as also for Tata Institute for Social Sciences. Pranali has led and curated as program directir several global shows including Art Chennai, Hope for Haiti and more.
Her formative years were dedicated to the making of some of the finest handmade rugs and
Kelims in India, in her family run exports business. This was dedicated to conserving the rich
tradition and legacy of carpet weaving and catered to international buyers and commercial
houses. This helped sharpen her design skills and aesthetics and under the watchful eye of
her father, develop an exclusive line of Modern Indian Rugs and Hand Tufted Carpets, all of
which were manufactured for export to Western Europe.
Her later assignments and projects have included a slew of innovative experience design and
cultural, spatial projects for brands like the Taj, Oakwood Premier and curating Chennai’s
premier Art festival – Art Chennai which express a profound grasp of aesthetics and a
lifestyle quotient.
Widely travelled, an advocate of the super local, she is a serious believer in the power of
culture and design to deliver impact, market leadership and conceptualise design led
experiences.
Managing Partner and Co-Founder of NYUCT Design Labs, India’s first Venture Design and Makers Collective, Manojeet loves blending multidisciplinary practices to build ventures, brands, innovations and destinations. A belief and lived experience in the power of venture design, distributed innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration led to the creation of NYUCT Design Labs. Its adventures have spanned across industries - Venture Capital, Legal, Healthcare, Government, Travel, Tourism, Hospitality, Education, Not for Profit, Fashion, Retail, Lifestyle, Impact and Real Estate - and is helped in this pursuit by a collective wisdom of more than 188 years amongst core partners who have led and executed on scale. Manojeet has been the Global Head of Brand & Marketing at IHCL (Vivanta by Taj, Gateway, Leisure SBU), headed the Global Strategic Alliances and Partnerships function, and served as the Group CMO of the retail led real estate group Phoenix Limited.
A business school alumnus of XIM (PGDM’ 97), a certified Tata Business Excellence Leader, Balanced Score Card practitioner and a lifelong student of Economics, Manojeet loves joining the dots. Some dots joined to design think and make Vivanta by Taj, the world’s 3rd best hospitality brand in the year 2014 (Conde Nast US Travellers’ Awards) and being hailed as a stroke of genius by Wallpaper UK. Not to mention awards & recognition at innovation and design forums (ITB Berlin Innovation, LHW Prague for Program Innovation, Tata Business Excellence, ).
With deep experience in strategy, innovation, brand & product development, experience
design, integrated marketing, IP design, Manojeet has walked the thin grey line between
strategy and imagination for several industry firsts with some of the most creative and
imaginative minds. This journey also spanned the creation and roll out of the ambitious
Brand Architecture at IHCL (a Harvard Business School case study since then) that saw the
birth of 4 brand new brands, change management and possibly the deepest exercise in
evolving business, brand culture, experiences & products around the architecture.
Venturing with design led innovation in the exciting edible space and buoyed by a vision of unlocking the cultural heritage of food keeps him inspired.
Widely travelled, an advocate of the super local, she is a serious believer in the power of
culture and design to deliver impact, market leadership and conceptualise design led
experiences.