Dan Nicholl and Ravi Naidoo discuss inspiration, design and creativity

In the parallel universe that is life without Covid-19, I'd be sitting across from Ravi Naidoo in the fabulous cellar of Harald Bresselschmidt, the German chef behind Cape Town institution Aubergine. We'd have an indulgent, meandering discussion of the sort of the Design Indaba founder is so fond, revelling in splendid food, an excellent bottle of wine, and the adventure that is Naidoo's life. Instead, we're conversing as the whole world does now, via yet another video call – and with a man who's initially a solemn version of his usually ebullient self.

"Covid exposes underlying symptoms in our bodies, but also in our businesses," is Naidoo's assessment of our current environment. "It's been a hubris killer, very humbling, very sobering. You'll find a more of subdued Ravi for a change."

But Naidoo is not a man to stay subdued for long, and his eyes light up as he chronicles the journey that he's travelled – a journey that lifted off properly when an unfulfilled medical student engaged in an art form that's almost lost in today's digital blur of email chains and WhatsApp groups: writing letters.

"I was at UCT Medical School, a post-grad research student. Madiba had been released, and as the country was reinventing itself, I had a chance for my own personal reinvention. And I was very lucky: one letter changed my life. I'd always hankered after the creative industry, and I wrote a letter to all the leading advertising agencies. I managed to inveigle myself into Young & Rubicam, and it changed the trajectory of my life."

That it most certainly did. 2020 marks 25 years of the platform that Naidoo's dramatic career switch inspired: Design Indaba, the globally celebrated gathering that's given a new understanding to what design encompasses, and provided an outlet for the creative drive that first steered him away from medicine.

"It was purely accidental," shrugs Naidoo, which isn't close to being true, but does reflect his general reluctance to take individual credit for success. "I'd just started my company, was lucky to have won my first pitch to Vodacom, and being reasonably solvent allowed me an opportunity to experiment in other spaces. I wanted to do some indie stuff, and this was the first indie project we could do.

"We had no frame of reference. We'd never been to a design conference. We started in 1995 with 200 people in the ballroom at the Mount Nelson, and by 2001 it was heaving. It's always had an activist orientation – the approach is three days of talking, 362 days of action. It's not just a gathering or an event, it's a mandate for action."

And so, 25 years on from that first tentative step, Design Indaba has become a creative celebration, a beacon for what's possible in a space that, as Naidoo suggests, "can be the X factor in our economy". If you've been to Design Indaba, you'll know just how wide the scope of its engagement is, architects alongside artists, engineers hanging out with coders. It's a gathering that starts conversations and inspires collaborations – cue the terrace of houses handed over to families who'd never lived anywhere but shacks, a project driven by Design Indaba alumni that Naidoo recalls with evident pride. But it's also a gathering that satisfies the founder's intense curiosity for life and what it offers – a curiosity that extends to sending people into space…

"It was an unbelievable, goosebumpy, Boy's Own dreamscape," Naidoo smiles, recalling the role he played in Mark Shuttleworth's First African In Space project. Shuttleworth had been impressed by Naidoo travelling Africa from top to bottom with the Africa Connection Rally, and was looking for someone to run communications for him. "Mark came to see me and said, 'I have this crazy idea. I want to go to space.'" And if you have a crazy idea, Naidoo is probably the right man to go to.

"I knew Mark before it was fashionable to know Mark," Naidoo explains of his friendship with the tech tycoon. "He used to walk round our offices in his slops, connecting us to what was then the proto-internet." That friendship inspired the narrative around Shuttleworth the spaceman: the creation of the Hip2B2 campaign promoting maths, science and technology, the 'phone call to Madiba, engaging with kids from space. "My hair stands on end when I remember the Soyuz rocket taking off with a South African flag painted on it. Sitting at mission control in Moscow, crying a river, was one of the most magical moments of my life."

Naidoo didn't have his own astronaut ambition, professing to being far too scared to board a rocket for space, but there's a keen sense of adventure when it comes to new opportunity. The latest of these is a project that's six years old, and is still two or three years from paying out any dividends, but has Naidoo visibly excited nonetheless.

"That's been a lovely journey," he reflects of time with Rain, the internet provider he works on alongside Paul Harris and Michael Jordaan. "It was the opportunity to diversify beyond creative design. I took everything I had, sold an apartment, liquidated a share portfolio, and went all in.

"I was lucky enough to name the company. Rain isn't just a cool brand name. We wanted to make access to data a social justice project, be the cheapest we could be. In nature rain doesn't discriminate between Bishop's Court and Khayelitsha, it's egalitarian and democratic, intrinsically linked to wellbeing in Africa. Remember Martin Luther King's speech, until justice flows like rain?"

Perhaps it's this latest adventure, more than jettisoning mates into outer space or uniting the design world in a South African celebration, that best sums up Ravi Naidoo: the chance to be creative, to shake up the status quo, and to contribute to the greater good. Business intent twinned with philanthropy, with a healthy dose of good fun along the way, an approach that's extended to starting DIVA, the Design Indaba Venture Accelerator to mentor and advise start-ups. But can even Naidoo's famously upbeat approach continue in these unsettling times? And do South Africans have reason to believe that our future is one to look forward to?

"Money for Covid response is being stolen, and you start to worry that corruption isn't a bug, it's the future," is the phlegmatic assessment of our current reality. "It's something we need to speak truth to power about, because it really could steal that future.

"But I'm still fairly optimistic – I just hope our leadership can pull things together. What imperils our nation is corruption, and I hope we can fix that. But if we get that right, all bets are on, we have absolutely everything to play for, and we can regain some of that lofty optimism we had in 1994."

And with that, subdued Ravi Naidoo is gone, replaced by the man who loves a challenge, looks on the bright side, and still believes in the country he adores. We might not be able to sit in a German chef's cellar over lunch and sparkling conversation, but Naidoo assures me that lunch will come. Here's hoping it's not the only prediction he'll get right.

• This article first appeared on the Change Exchange, an online platform by BrightRock, provider of the first-ever life insurance that changes as your life changes. The opinions expressed in this piece are the writer's own and don't necessarily reflect the views of BrightRock.