Mar 2022 – Jul 2023 · 1 yr 4 mos · Bangalore Urban, Karnataka, India

• I led a new initiative that was focused on driving innovation in terms of Customer Experience across all touchpoints beyond the ‘Tata Neu’ mobile app. This included identifying unmet / latent needs across the customer journey.

Jul 2019 – Feb 2022 · 2 yrs 7 mos · Mumbai Area, India

• At Fractal.ai, my mandate was to lead and build a strategic design and behavioral science capability, in its consulting and product development efforts. This included integrating the team that was acquired via M&A from Final Mile, a firm specializing in behavioral science led consulting. Over 3 years, I helped build a team of 75+ specialists in Design Research, UX Design, Information Design, Behavioral Science. This included a leadership team of 5 Design Directors. We delivered Fractal’s AI and Analytics solutions powered by Design & Behavioral Science for global Fortune 500 clients. We also created a Design System, exclusively for analytics & data science, and this was mentioned twice in Forrester’s two different reports.

Jul 2014 – Jun 2019 · 4 yrs 11 mos · Mumbai Area, India

• I set up and led Studio 5B (https://www.studio-5b.com), a design thinking & innovation lab at Dr. Reddy's. As part of the CEO's office, my mandate was to apply Design Thinking to drive differentiation in the branded generic medicines sold by Dr. Reddy's in India, US, Russia and other geographies. This included service innovation, digital transformation, new business models, and packaging innovation. I helped build a team of talented and diverse sets of designers and innovators with backgrounds in Industrial Design, Design Research, Service Design, Interaction Design, Communication Design, Business, Psychology, Film making. Some of our work has been featured in IDEO U's course on 'Designing for Change' (https://www.ideou.com/products/designing-for-change).
• More details here:
• https://www.studio-5b.com/

Apr 2013 – May 2014 · 1 yr 1 mo · Mumbai Area, India

• I was part of an inspiring team of designers, innovators and specialists at IDEO. We worked on variety of interesting innovation opportunities and challenges for organizations in India and other parts of the world.

Oct 2009 – Apr 2013 · 3 yrs 6 mos · Bangalore

• Innovation Labs is an innovation consulting practice, and specialist unit of IMRB International – India’s leading market research consultancy, part of Kantar – WPP’s insight, information and consultancy network. Innovation Labs was set up in late 2009, with the intention to provide tangible, disruptive business outcomes for organizations.
• I led the conceptualization and setting up of Innovation Labs, from scratch. Our innovation methodology was centered around ‘Design Thinking’ – a problem solving approach that combines the power of three very critical skills – Empathy, Creativity and Rationality. Using empathetic creative problem solving skills, coupled with foresight and business strategy, we helped companies with ‘here-and-now’ and future growth opportunities.

Jan 2009 – Jan 2014 · 5 yrs · Hyderabad Area, India

• As a member of the Executive Council, I support and guide some of the activities at The Centre for Emerging Markets Solutions (CEMS) at ISB, Hyderabad. CEMS has been set up as an inter-disciplinary research centre at the Indian School of Business (ISB) with the conviction that market-based solutions exist for a large number of the developing world’s problems, as long as new products and services are developed, proof-of-concept demonstrated, and capital is made available from a variety of sources. It is also important to note that the socio-economic problems of developing countries are fundamentally interlinked and cannot therefore be addressed in isolation. There are real market opportunities in addressing the problems of developing economies. Thus, CEMS promotes the idea that the next 800 million in India and 4 billion globally be seen not as a burden but as a great opportunity.

Nov 2008 – Sep 2009 · 10 mos

Jul 2007 – Nov 2008 · 1 yr 4 mos · Bangalore

• One of the most life-altering experiences I've had -- starting from an audacious dream of setting up a design thinking led innovation consulting firm for the India market, to getting our first customer, to being offered 'angel funding', to refusing the seed capital (to realizing later, refusing it was a bad idea), to hiring four people who believed in the dream, to dealing with all the ups & downs of being a first-time-entrepreneur, to finally calling it a day.

Dec 2005 – Jun 2007 · 1 yr 6 mos

Jun 2003 – Dec 2005 · 2 yrs 6 mos · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Jan 2001 – Sep 2002 · 1 yr 8 mos

Jun 1997 – Apr 2000 · 2 yrs 10 mos · Bangalore

• My very first job. I was the first designer to be hired in the startup team (at that point, around 20 people or so). Unforgettable experience. Learning to design user interfaces for websites, online applications at a time when having an email address was not common. And at a time, when the term 'Interaction Design' was unheard of. One of the most memorable projects -- I worked in California during the peak of the dot-com boom (late 1999) with one of our clients -- two entrepreneurs, who had just graduated from Harvard and had secured angel funding, to create a prototype which they could use to seek venture capital funding (which they did get).