KATHIWADA:
Introducing a little-known place to the world.
At Turntable, we say a loud yes to the new and the challenging. We relish wading through uncharted territory, devising fresh strategies to traverse complexity and, ultimately, share stories of discovery and adventure.
We first heard of Kathiwada—a forested, hilly region in Madhya Pradesh—when we were hired to manage the portfolio of the House of Kathiwada (HOK), its royal family. Led by Rana Digvijay Sinh Kathiwada, the family had a vision: to put Kathiwada on the map by 2034 through a place-led, place-making initiative. By creating jobs, generating creative and economic opportunities, and catalysing a new model of rural development, HOK would be walking hand-in-hand with its people into building a new world for themselves.
The Kathiwada Foundation is the philanthropic arm implementing this vision, with HOK anchoring the broader portfolio. The Foundation had been quietly active in the region for decades supporting healthcare, education, conservation, and livelihood initiatives but it had never attempted to articulate the depth and interdependence of its work to the outside world.
The brief was clear, but not simple: help communicate a decade-long rural transformation initiative rooted in a princely legacy that is now quietly evolving into a bold, place-based model for development. We had to communicate the worldview of a man realizing his dream for his homeland—a vision that reimagines what rural revitalization could look like in India; that culminates in putting Kathiwada on the map not just metaphorically but as a working blueprint for equitable, sustainable change.
It became clear that this wasn’t just a branding exercise. It was an invitation to witness and translate a profoundly layered place-making project, one that demanded not just clarity, but care.
At first glance, the Foundation’s work doesn’t lend itself to neat categories or tidy headlines. It spans regenerative agriculture, tribal livelihoods, water conservation, waste management, and youth skilling. It balances ancestral land stewardship with systems thinking. It works slowly and deliberately, listening to the land and the people before offering solutions.
And in many ways, it resists the aesthetics and urgency that often shape philanthropic storytelling. This was not a foundation trying to draw attention to itself.
This was a foundation trying to draw attention to the land.
We knew we had to meet the place before we could represent it.
Nothing truly clicked until we went to Kathiwada. The hills, always present in the background; the forest, thick and breathing; the quiet confidence of the team on the ground; the villagers who spoke not just of their needs but of what they already knew, about the soil, the trees, the seasons, and how best to live with them.
When you visit Kathiwada, you begin to understand that this isn’t a top-down intervention. It’s a community-led, deeply contextual, long-view approach to rural prosperity. You begin to see why the Foundation has steadily invested in building institutional infrastructure and intergenerational trust. And you begin to grasp the scope of Kathiwada 2034, a master plan that envisions a thriving local economy with environmental, social, and cultural value stitched into its very fabric.
Our role at Turntable was to help make this vision legible without reducing it. We weren’t just building a brand. We were building a bridge: between the region and the world, between donors and development partners, between the past and a possible future.
We started with months of research. It entailed numerous interviews with the Foundation’s board, in-depth conversations with the Rana himself, and a deep dive into documents, images, prior communication. We mapped focus areas, unearthed stories, and drew out a theory of change that could hold the weight of the Foundation’s ambitions. And then, slowly, we shaped a language, a vocabulary for this broad endeavour, one that was simple without being simplistic, strategic without being sterile.
From there, we built a brand that respected the wider House of Kathiwada portfolio while giving the Foundation a distinct voice.
The eagle, featured in the HOK crest, reappears here but in flight. Still protective, but now directional. Aspiring. Expanding. It became a symbol of momentum, of hope and a nod to the Foundation’s ambition to be hyperlocal, yet influential beyond its geography.
The colour palette draws directly from the land: a bright sky blue for clarity and openness, a deeper blue for trust and stability. The hills find their way into the logo too as an outline, subtle but unmistakable. A visual anchor to the terrain that shapes not only this place, but its future.
Communication, at its core, is never just about awareness. Fundamentally, it is about connection.
How do you tell the story of a place, one that most people haven’t heard of, let alone visited without flattening its complexity?
How do you make someone care about a place they’ve never been to?
How do you do that without slipping into pity or poverty porn?
How do you make the viewer feel proximity, not just emotionally, but spatially?
We decided to let the land lead.
We commissioned photography and film to capture the textures of Kathiwada. The grain of the trees, the tilt of the farmland, and the faces of people not as beneficiaries, but as co-authors of what’s to come. We wove these visuals with a narrative arc that could speak to donors, government partners, and development organisations alike, each needing something slightly different but all needing to see the bigger picture.
For the Foundation, fundraising for such a grand vision is a secondary goal. The primary task was to articulate a model—a place-based, non-consumptive, non-extractive approach to transformation that can ripple outwards.
And to do that, we had to start not with numbers or metrics, but with place.
With where we are.
With what it looks like.
With who’s already there, doing the work.
Sometimes, branding isn’t about what you add.
It’s about what you hold intact, sacred, and undistorted.
Kathiwada didn’t need a brand that spoke for it.
It needed a brand that could listen as closely as it speaks.
For more, visit: www.kathiwadafoundation.com