JWT's Kalpita Bose joins Umbrella Designs as CEO

Her mandate includes providing end-to-end design solution for clients.

Umbrella Designs has appointed Kalpita Bose as chief executive officer. Based out of Mumbai, she will focus on creating end-to-end design solutions for clients and work on positioning the agency as a holistic, strategy-based design company. Prior to this, Bose spent five years at JWT.

Bhupal Ramnathkar, founder, Umbrella Designs, comments, "Umbrella has always been extremely strong on the design front. There are very few strategic designers in this industry that can contribute to our vision of being an independent, strategic, holistic design company. So we are fortunate to have Kalpita join our team."

Speaking on her new role, Bose says, "I'm quite excited about this new challenge. Art and design has always been a strong point of Umbrella Designs. I believe India has great design talent and we need to hone them to produce amazing work. Also, few Indian companies specialise in providing end-to-end design solutions. We aim to become one-stop shop for brands offering them integrated solutions."

Bose has over 17 years of industry experience. She started her career in advertising and worked for four years before shifting focus to design. Her career in design began at DMA Design with a special focus on packaging for major FMCG brands for Unilever.

She moved to Designsutra at Contract Advertising in 2003 where she led a group of designers and handled a diverse range of brands across categories for clients like Cadbury, Unilever - Skincare, Shoppers Stop retail and Raymond - Person Care. Bose also handled the F&B design mandate for JW Marriott and Renaissance Group of Hotels, when they entered the Indian market. She helped them expand and establish their presence. After leaving Designsutra, she established the design department at Rediffusion Y&R, which handled brands like Colgate, Taj Group of Hotels, Tata Group and Marico.

In 2009, Bose moved and set up the design cell at JWT. She successfully expanded the portfolio of work for some of the leading brands in the country. Her focus has been on design strategies and offering a complete strategic branding solution to clients, ranging from business strategies to branding solutions, branded experiences, space design, packaging innovations and portfolio expansions for clients like Godrej, CK Birla Group, Orient Electric, the Hero Group, Taj Hotels, Tata Salt, GSK - Horlicks, Boost, Gitanjali Jewellers, Univercell SYNC Smartphone Retail, VLCC Skincare, Madura Garments, Nestle and Pepsi FritoLays.