Co-Founder & Director, Elephant

Ashwini Deshpande

With a master’s in visual communications designer from the National Institute of Design, Ahmadabad, India, Ashwini started her design entrepreneurship journey over 35 years ago, by co-founding India’s pioneering multidisciplinary design practice, Elephant*.

Ashwini leads Branding & Communication Design at Elephant. She has been part of the awardwinning work for global brands in diverse segments.

As a key member of The Design Alliance Asia consortium, Ashwini has collaborated with designers from 11 Asian countries on award winning international projects including research reports, publications & seminars. She edited the research compilation book called “Colours of Asia” that was supported by Create HK Fund.

She has been a jury at marquee international design awards, such as the Cannes Lions (France), The One Show (USA), Pentawards London, Design for Asia Awards (HK) & Spikes Asia (Singapore).

Ashwini was Jury President at the at the LIA – London International Awards, D&AD Awards – UK, MAD Stars – S. Korea and AdFest – Thailand. She was part of the Singapore Good Design Awards (SG Mark) 2025 jury most recently.

Ashwini has lectured across more than 20 countries including ICOGRADA Design Week, Business of Design Week, International Design Congress etc. Some other international engagements include Global Social Impact Summit by Rockefeller Foundation, Copenhagen Co-creation Agenda by Danish Design Foundation and the Girl Up initiative by The United Nations Foundation.

She is an active member of the Association of Designers of India (ADI) since its inception. She co-founded The Collective, an initiative by women creative leaders in India to foster safe workplaces and is an advisor-mentor to the ‘Indian Creative Women’ that promotes diversity & equitable opportunities in the creative agencies. Ashwini is on the Advisory Boards of Design Programmes at IIT (Guwahati), IIT (Gandhinagar), FLAME University & Bennett University.

Impact Magazine has featured Ashwini among 50 Most Influential Women in Media for ten consecutive years and she is also on the Campaign India’s A-List for several years.

Ashwini mentors start-ups through TiE – The Indus Entrepreneurs platform where she also serves on the Governing Council. She serves on MCCIA Sports, Media & Entertainment Committee and CII National Committee on Global Branding of Indian Crafts & Handicrafts.

She is a certified Board Director and serves as an Independent Director on the Board of Indigo Paints, a listed (1 B USD) entity.