Q&A for brand and design practitioners. Not ivory tower discussions, but voices from the trenches.
What advice would you give a product startup from your experience?
We have limited resources. Should we be focusing on designing a few features well OR putting out a larger feature set quickly and then tweaking design?
I work at the intersection of brand, design and technology.
A closet geek, I started my career with Infosys when they were just starting up. I was one of two partners at Ray+Keshavan, the country’s leading brand and design consultancy, before its acquisition by WPP-owned Brand Union. I’ve had the privilege of creating brands like Airtel, Kotak Bank, Mother Dairy, Titan, Arvind, Fortis, Max, Aditya Birla Capital, Vistara Airlines and many more. Because I’ve always wanted to develop a product, I co-founded KineticGlue, a social enterprise platform that was acquired by BMC Software in 2013. I was then part of the founding team at Varana, a luxury fashion brand that aims to take Indian craft and design techniques to a global market (www.varanaworld.com) I am also an active angel investor and advisor with Kstart, Kalaari Capital’s seed stage fund. Currently, I am really excited about startup No 4, so watch this space.
Given the massive change all around us, what we need right now are less ivory-tower discussions and more voices from the trenches. This site is an attempt to share whatever knowledge I have gained as a founder and practitioner. If you have a question, send it in and I’ll do my best to answer it.