I've spent 12+ years designing for the India that lives outside conference rooms — at Microsoft, PharmEasy, BlackBuck, and now Sri Mandir, where our work helped scale revenue 12× in 18 months. Somewhere along the way I stopped being just a designer. I understand the technology, the craft, and the business metrics — so I don't just imagine better experiences, I build and ship them faster than most teams can plan them.
How it began…
I trained as an architect, became a designer, grew into a design leader, and then taught myself to build with AI. Different chapters, same obsession: take a deeply Indian, deeply offline behaviour and bring it online — without losing its soul, and without ignoring the P&L.
Today I lead design at AppsForBharat (Sri Mandir), helping create the faith-tech category. My team's work has helped scale revenue from 2Cr to 24Cr+ MRR, and I've gone well beyond "design" — running GTM experiments, owning growth for Sri Panchangam (50K installs in 3 months), and building the AI tools my teams work with every day.
I quit my job to found ThekaBook — Slack for India's 15M construction professionals. Bootstrapped it to 10,000 users and $10K MRR, got selected for Microsoft for Startups, and made 3 hard pivots. Two years as a founder taught me more about tech, money and users than a decade of employment — it's where I learned to read a P&L the way I read a wireframe.
At PharmEasy (Docon) I became a real design leader — scaled a team of 13 and shipped India's first online prescription software. 10,000+ doctors, Rx time down from 10 minutes to 1.5, ratings up from 3.5★ to 4.9★. That's when it clicked: design quality and business metrics are the same conversation.
Microsoft was my AI education. On the Viva Insights AI team I designed wellbeing experiences for 30M+ users in 120+ countries — and our work got featured by Satya Nadella at Build 2020. I left with a deep respect for how AI systems actually work under the hood. It changed everything I built after.
At BlackBuck (now IPO-bound) I led the team behind the BOSS app — moving 10,000+ truck owners from paper diaries to smartphones. Designing for users the industry ignores taught me that empathy isn't a workshop exercise, it's a competitive advantage.
I was the first UX designer at ZestMoney, redesigning India's first 100% cardless EMI checkout for people who'd never taken a loan. Conversion went from 8% to 13% — the first time I saw my pixels move a revenue number, and honestly, I was hooked.
It all started with a B.Arch at IIT Roorkee. I still design products the way architects design buildings — structure first, delight always, and never forget who has to live inside it.
Featured · AppsForBharat
Faith is India's oldest daily habit — and there was no playbook for bringing it online. My team and I are writing it: digital puja, chadhawa, astrology & sacred commerce, designed with the reverence devotees deserve and the rigour a 12×-growth business demands. This is the most meaningful design problem I've ever worked on.
hover or tap the diyas — light all five ✨
I sat with 50+ devotees across India before touching a roadmap — then translated what I heard into a user-backward, revenue-first strategy alongside founders and CXOs.
I built one design system to power seven apps — because I've seen what duplication costs. Handoffs became a non-event, and my designers got their evenings back.
I lead 12 designers across 7 verticals — Puja, Chadhawa, Commerce, Astrology and beyond. My job is making them faster and better than I ever was; mentorship is the operating system.
Sri Panchangam is my 0 → 1 inside the company — I conceptualised it and own its growth end to end: GTM, experimentation, monetisation. Design leaders who own revenue numbers are rare. I like it that way.
AI Product Ninja · Independent builds
This is my edge, and I earned it the hard way: I understand the technology deeply enough to build with it, design well enough to make it feel effortless, and read metrics well enough to know if it's working. So while most teams are still writing the PRD, I've already shipped the MVP and I'm looking at retention data. Three products of my own so far — many more inside companies.
Born from the most Indian question there is: "aaj kya banau?" AI meal-planning for Indian households — 21 meals a week, planned around what's actually in our kitchens. I designed it, built it, and shipped it to test whether AI can earn a seat at the family dining table.
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My bet that AI commerce works best when it's emotional, not efficient. Family photos turned into illustrated keepsake frames — generated by AI, validated with real paying orders, not survey responses.
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The day's news, retold as comics — I love comic illustration, so I built a daily generative pipeline around it. An experiment in whether AI visuals can make current affairs snackable for people who skip long-form. (Spoiler: they scroll, they stop, they read.)
Coming soon
AI Design Leader · Inside the org
I could have kept my AI workflows to myself and looked like a superhero. Instead, at AppsForBharat I turned them into internal tools anyone can use — because an hour I invest in tooling returns hundreds of hours across design, marketing and analytics. That's cost optimisation you can actually measure.
Our marketing team was drowning in India's festival calendar. I built an AI planner that drafts, themes and schedules devotional content — a week of effort became an afternoon of curation.
Every festival needs a hundred creatives, and burning out designers on production work is a leadership failure. So I built a generative pipeline that keeps assets on-brand — and my team focused on the work that actually needs them.
Selected work · 2017 — 2024
Doctors don't adopt software; they tolerate it. My team of 13 and I built India's first online prescription software they actually loved — across 35+ specialties. The ratings tell the story.
My founder chapter. I conceptualised, built and scaled a full-stack app for a 15M-strong workforce — three pivots, one Microsoft for Startups selection, and the education that made me dangerous with a P&L.
Where I learned how AI products really get made. Inclusive design for wellbeing and productivity on the Viva Insights AI team — and a proud moment when Satya Nadella featured our work at Build 2020.
The BOSS app taught me my most durable lesson: the hardest design problems aren't on the screen. Moving truck owners off paper diaries meant designing for trust first, pixels second.
How I lead
My unfair advantage is the overlap: I speak technology with engineers, craft with designers, and metrics with founders — in the same meeting. Here's what that looks like in practice.
12 designers across 7 verticals today, 30+ mentees over the years. My method is simple: tie every craft decision to a business goal, and watch generalists become owners.
I never wait for an AI mandate. I build the tool, prove the ROI on real work, then scale the workflow across the org. People follow what works, not what's announced.
Because I understand the tech stack and the design system and the metric that matters, ideas become working products in days — before a rupee of engineering investment is committed.
Truckers, doctors, first-time borrowers, devotees. User immersions in, revenue-first roadmaps out — and I own GTM and monetisation, I don't just observe them.
One design system powering seven live apps: shared components, governed tokens, and handoffs engineers stopped complaining about. Architecture school never really left me.
Design duplication, manual creative production, analytics bottlenecks — operational waste is just bad UX for the company. I find it and remove it, systematically.
Don't take my word for it
Viraj has an exceptional talent for scaling teams while cultivating a culture that strikes the perfect balance between creative freedom and design rigor. Any organization would be fortunate to have his guidance.
The most impactful mentor I've ever had. Viraj simplifies the complexities of design — making it about building a story and giving meaning to every decision.
His attention to detail and ability to manage complex projects under pressure — designing Viva Insights through the pandemic — were truly commendable.
Instrumental in building our product and website. His strategic insights enhanced our offering and contributed to the platform's successful launch.
Next chapter
I'm always up for conversations about design leadership, AI products worth shipping, and the occasional mentorship chat. The fastest way to know if we'll work well together is to just talk.