Design Leadership
Building teams that thrive: my leadership growth & impact
Over the past 8.5 years at Swiggy, I have grown from an individual contributor (IC) to a Director of Design, shaping some of the company’s most impactful products while building and mentoring design teams across multiple charters. My journey has been defined by a deep commitment to balancing design craft with people leadership, fostering teams that can navigate complexity, drive cross-functional outcomes, and adopt emerging AI capabilities.
I document my journey of self-awareness, adaptability, and impact — and how these lessons have prepared me to take on senior leadership roles in new environments.
My leadership style
At Swiggy, my journey as a leader has been about balancing hands-on execution with strategic vision, while fostering teams that thrive on ownership and cross-functional collaboration. In the past year, I’ve focused on integrating AI-driven workflows across the team to boost speed, creativity, and product relevance.
My approach as a senior design leader can be broken into 3 parts:
How I motivate my team and reduce burnout
How I unblock and scale my designers' impact
How I translate charter objectives into compelling visions for the team
Building a high performing sports team
As the team grows, it’s impossible for me to be involved in every detail of day-to-day work. So, it’s critical to make sure that design quality doesn’t drop as we expand. To achieve this, I’ve driven key practices that empower designers at all levels—helping them have real impact, get the right support, and avoid burnout.
1️⃣ Design clarity & excellence
One of the main expectations from the design team is to consistently deliver high-quality design work within tight deadlines. This is because we need to keep innovating for consumers and improving efficiency for supply and partnerships. To maintain excellence in UX and craft, here are some of the rituals I run:
Documentation and tracking: Ensure ownership and accountability in the design team. It also serve as a single source of truth for designers to show their progress.
Kanban boards to show progress
Add daily tracking notes
Clarity of scope and problem space: Practices to enable designers to focus on the right direction and speed up design exploration and execution
ACBs/DCBs
What are the accepted customer beliefs and what beliefs do they desire?
Jobs to be done
Identify what the objective of each step of the flow is and design accordingly
Design principles
What guiding design principles will help us stay on the right track during explorations?
Quality of design outputs: Run weekly design reviews to present work and receive feedback from the team, and working sessions for final designs finesse and copy reviews
Cross-functional collaboration: Work with data science team and customer insights team in early stages of the project. This will help have a strong foundation for driving solutions.
Data Science
Get metrics and instrumentation for existing features & identify how to measure impact of design accordingly
Customer Insights
Leverage their expertise in Behavioural Science to test early concepts with actual users to better drive design direction
Highlight great work: Share my teams' work through Slack channels and Thursday Show and Tell sessions. Recognise their efforts and craft, and inspire other designers in the organisation
2️⃣ Team Support & Growth
As my teams grow, I’ve shifted from directly mentoring a few designers to creating a supportive culture of growth, learning, and connection for everyone. Here are some of the practices I follow to build a positive team environment:
Right designers for the right projects based on their strengths and areas for improvement. This helps them grow, be more fungible and give their managers more leverage.
Let every designer have a voice, no matter their level. I encourage them to manage up and speak freely with their managers or me, and the design leaders should be always ready to help, even during busy times.
Monthly 1:1 catchups with all the designers on my team to support their growth and offer any help they need.
Open townhalls every quarter with the respective teams to check in on motivation levels and address any concerns.
New joiner rituals by ordering desserts and cake for them on their first day. This helps to break the ice and make them feel more welcome
3️⃣ Hiring top talent
Attracting top talent to Swiggy has never been a problem—many designers see it as a dream destination in India. However, hiring for my charters has always been a challenge because each charter requires very specific skills and experiences which most candidates unfortunately lack in.
Profile for Minis - candidates with experience in 0-1 product building, who show proactiveness and can thrive in ambiguous situations
Profile for Instamart B2C - candidates proficient in product thinking, UI and motion design, who will raise the bar for consumer app experience
Hiring for Instamart B2B - candidates who are extremely passionate about complex problems in the supply / operations domain
I take pride in finding the perfect fit for my team, and most of the designers have gone on to create impact for New Initiatives
400+ screened
for Instamart & Minis charters
110+ profiles
I've shortlisted & interviewed
14 candidates
I've hired for my teams
12 days
avg time to roll out offer
Scaling design, research & AI capabilities
With the rise of AI, I’ve also encouraged my managers to bring AI-powered practices to their teams and set an example for the larger organization.
1️⃣ Scaling design systems for New Initiatives
As the design team and the organization grew quickly, app experiences across charters like Food, Dineout, and New Initiatives started to feel fragmented and disconnected. When we began standardizing components into a Swiggy Design Language System (DLS), I took on the challenge of scaling the DLS to my charters. My goal was to create a cohesive experience for all Swiggy users.
A snapshot of Swiggy's DLS (Slurrp)
Scaling DLS for Genie: I picked Swiggy Genie as the first product to incorporate DLS components, due to its simplicity & minimal number of flows. We leveraged all tokens to the maximum to elevate Genie
A look at Genie 2.0 using DLS components
Scaling DLS for Minis: We build Minis from the ground up with DLS compliance in mind. Since it was an external platform for D2C sellers, I made sure to retain its “Swiggyness” by reusing 70% of our design library components and adapting the other 30% for the unique Minis experience.
Minis uses different color tokens, but shares text and input tokens
Scaling DLS for Instamart: This was a mammoth task that took over a year to pull off with very tight bandwidth from my design team. The Instamart product had many quick commerce flows that weren’t accounted for in the DLS yet. Our focus was on reusing as many existing tokens as possible and creating new components that could be reused by other offerings too.
Unified track screen: We also decided on a common track screen UI for all offerings. We ran a 2-day workshop in 2023 to come up with concepts, and used the final framework to guide the unification roadmap.
Unified track screen implemented in order
2️⃣ Migrating Instamart to Native
Initially, Instamart was built using webviews to move quickly during COVID. However, this created a noticeable gap between the Instamart and food experiences—especially as competitors built native-first apps.
Once Instamart became DLS-compliant, I worked with my B2C manager and the engineering team to move the experience to native on iOS and Android. After four months of testing and pixel-perfect tweaks, we launched the key touchpoints natively, resulting in a smoother, snappier experience. Now, we also run app experience hackathons to fully leverage the native stack.
More about native migration
3️⃣ Using AI to 10x the speed and efficiency of design
As AI becomes more central to tech and product work, I’ve encouraged my designers to be early adopters of AI in their design process. We aim for 30% of design work to be done by AI, so we can spend more time focusing on defining problems and crafting thoughtful designs. We also have a budget for trying new tools like Cursor and Stitch, helping us stay ahead in the AI space.
Using GenAI to shape design outputs: My team has learnt to utilize ChatGPT, Claude and other tools to further refine their final design outputs and raise the bar of quality. This includes Image Generation & modification and UX copy recommendations.
Using AI for visioning and early feedback: The Instamart B2B design team leverages AI tools for envisioning complex systems for their stakeholders or to generate quick concepts using prompts and gather early feedback from users. This has successfully cut down the time to do Proof of Concepts and testing from from 3 weeks to 2 hours!
Using AI to streamline design : The company has unlocked many AI tools, like Gemini for finding emails or documents easily with a prompt, and an in-house AI-powered search dashboard to quickly pull project metrics and data. I encourage my designers to make full use of these to maximize their understanding of the work they do.
4️⃣ Instilling customer centricity and data backed designs
With the organization’s new data science, analytics, and customer insights teams, I’ve focused on getting my team to use these resources fully. This helps us guide design and deliver real impact.
Customer immersions: I’ve set a minimum of 15 user research sessions for all designers. Instamart B2C designers can join customer calls every Friday, while Minis and Instamart B2B designers do on-ground research and gather feedback directly from their users. We also create best practices for writing research scripts and documenting findings, with a strong focus on extracting key insights from this research.
Instamart B2C
Agency helps to recruit users from Pan India, who order online from quick commerce apps
Instamart B2B
Ops team helps designers to get in touch with all actors in the supply ecosystem
Minis
Seller team curates a list of sellers to participate in user testing and user interviews with us
Behaviour Science: We work closely with the customer insights team to understand how our products shape user behavior and perception. This helps us spot gaps and test early prototypes with users to gather insights and guide design.
I also had the Behavior Science team run separate workshops for the Instamart and Minis teams to help them apply Human Intelligence in their daily work.
Data-driven design: I encourage my teams to make design decisions using both the user perspective and data-driven insights. To help them do this, I work with the Data Science and Analytics team to make sure they can access metrics through the PowerBI dashboard whenever needed. If they can’t, I remind them to get the data they need from their Product Manager partners.
5️⃣ Evangelizing accessibility
In 2023, i was involved with an engineering manager in championing accessbile experiences for the Food and Quick commerce experience, incorporating best practices in the design specification and workflow. Now I work with the DLS designer and engineer to ensure accessibility audits at the token level, to simplify effort on design and ensure basic a11y protocols are followed.
Accessibility fixes: I worked on defining the focus order and inputs for food and Instamart flows for two kinds of users - those with muscular issues who use screen readers, and those with visual impairments who use Talkback / VoiceOver to navigate and place orders. The engineering team incorporated my specifications and shipped within 2 weeks, resulting in ~4500 additional orders per day.
Evangelizing to design team and org: We built a Figma plugin to generate a11y specs, and presented a slide deck to talk about a11y and how to add a11y specifications with the plugin. I also guided the DLS designer on adding accessibility specs at the DLS token level, and enforced accessibility audits before handing over to developers.
Educating about need for a11y and using the a11y plugin
A11y specs in DLS and A11y figma plugin
Drive design vision and strategy
1️⃣ Define early design visions for 0-1 products
For Swiggy’s flagship products like Instamart and Minis, I worked with the co-founders and my VP of Design to understand the product’s potential and vision. This meant learning why the product would succeed, what the Product-Market Fit (PMF) looked like, the Total Addressable Market (TAM), and how it would shape user behavior.
Using this context, I designed a proof of concept to help the founders visualize the product and get their specific feedback. This then shaped the direction and vision for the team, including all key stakeholders.
2️⃣ Visioning exercises to set tone for future roadmaps
At Swiggy, consumer products need constant innovation and fresh interaction patterns every year to stay ahead of competitors. To accomplish this, design leaders gather yearly for a visioning workshop, to brainstorm trends, share ideas, and propose moonshot concepts. These are compiled into a Figma file with interactive prototypes that we show to senior leadership, helping them visualize what their charters could look like in the next 1–2 years.
For New Initiatives, I’ve led two visioning workshops for Instamart and one for Minis. These sessions have helped us find fresh design inspiration and strengthen our focus on craft and design thinking.
We also run design hackathons every year to give designers a break from routine work and spark new ideas. At Instamart, I’ve organized two hackathons in the past two years, and most of the ideas from these sessions have been picked up and implemented.
3️⃣ Co-drive roadmap and strategy with Product
When the Annual Operating Plan (AOP) for Instamart is finalized at the start of the financial year, I meet with Product Leadership to understand the vision, strategy, and goals for the next year. Based on my understanding of upcoming projects, I work with my Product peer to create the quarterly roadmap and help my team stay mentally prepared for what’s ahead.
Here are some rituals that my team employs with the Product and Engineering team to continue driving impact for the charter:
Monday sync-ups with Product and Engineering: To help design leaders understand what’s coming up for the week and plan the team’s work and priorities.
Continuous tracking and updates: We use the JIRA Kanban board and tickets as a single source of truth to ensure design deliverables are on track
Hard stack-ranking and prioritization: Because of how competitive the market is, a lot of ad hoc work comes up. So, it’s crucial for me and my Design Managers to reallocate projects quickly and communicate any changes in priorities upstream to senior leaders right away.
New joiner rituals by ordering desserts and cake for them on their first day. This helps to break the ice and make them feel more welcome
Key takeaways as a leader
Across Instamart, Genie, and Minis, I’ve shipped category-defining products while scaling teams that balance craft with speed. I’ve built a culture of trust, psychological safety, and AI-powered experimentation. And I’ve proven that I can adapt my leadership style — rolling up my sleeves to craft flows when needed, or shaping long-term vision and culture at the leadership table.
I am now ready to scale my learnings as a Swiggy leader in the next company — driving products that matter, and building the next generation of high-impact, empowered design teams.
