I was born in Delhi. I went to the US & did my schooling in California. Afterwards, I shifted back to India while in 2nd grade & completed the rest of my schooling in Delhi. My dad, being an entrepreneur, tried to push me towards more practical experiences from an early age. So, I started meeting and interacting with some entrepreneurs.
While choosing a career path & a vision for myself, I fell in love with an Interior Designer’s Studio. And that’s how I stumbled upon my vision of becoming a Designer.
I researched more in-depth and decided that I should pursue Product Design.
In 2015, I did my Bachelors in Design from Bangalore. In 2016, when I came back home for my vacation, my dad asked me a question, “What are you planning to do all summer?” And, like any other kid, I answered, “I am going to enjoy, have good food & have fun with my friends.” With all seriousness, he asked me to look for a summer internship. I got rattled. Because in my head, I just came back from my first-year summer vacation.
As an obedient son, I applied around for a few weeks, but couldn’t get anywhere. In the end, my dad offered me to work in his company and gave me a few design and marketing jobs there. So, I worked there for a few months and left, realizing how hard it was to prove my value in this cutthroat industry. Then I decided that I need to be prepared and have a strong profile, with an amazing portfolio before my next year’s vacation.
Luckily, I cracked an internship with Autodesk & got the opportunity to work with their Fusion 360 team; experienced the feeling of being valued and appreciated for the contribution I made there. When I got back, I started my initial journey as a solopreneur and I was freelancing with a few startups as well.
One day, I came across’ ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’, and realized what real empowerment is, and learned the art of building assets and big businesses.
By the time I was in the third year of my college, my friends and I came together to start the company AVIAN.
We tried our hands out on some different businesses – namely – ‘A Gentleman’s Story’ (Leather bags), ‘Tres Entertainment’ (Music production company), ‘Goxolo’ (Apple Watch accessories – drop shipping), and a few others.
These were some of the best and the most enjoyable years of my life working with my friends, laying down the foundations of who I am and what our business is today.
By the time we graduated, we already had done many projects as a multi-disciplinary design agency and were making good money. But, the money wasn’t good enough to retain the whole team. The vision got blurry and slowly the team fell apart.
After that, I went back to being a solopreneur retaining the brand AVIAN.
In my journey ahead, I realized I was stretching myself too thin. So I thought of finding our niche and was able to narrow it down to UX/UI Design.
But we needed to specialize in something. That’s when we came across ‘Design Sprints’ by Google Ventures.
I knew this would revolutionize the way Design Thinking is practised across organizations. I quickly got certified as a Design Sprint Master. We found my niche, finally.
As of 2019, we were one of the only companies in the country that specialized in Design Sprints (our USP). And we started signing up a lot of funded startups as our clients.
While working with a bunch of startups, I found the answer to the question, “Why are we not a startup?” We were not scalable, the nature of our business was not investable and wasn’t meant for high growth or exponential value.
I studied our clients and other funded startups – attended the Venture Acceleration Programme by Tie and StartupSchool by YCombinator to learn from industry leaders.
One major problem we identified to solve was the inability of startups and corporates to truly leverage Design Thinking with a structured process for scale.
That is what led to the inception of Dezy It. At that very moment, we knew we had stumbled upon something precious.
I travelled to Australia, Dubai & Hong Kong attending design conferences; learning more about design and how it’s being practised across geographies.
By the end of 2020, one of the co-founders came back & joined us. This was the beginning of our next phase. Since then, we have grown a lot. Now, we are a team of 25+ people, doing over 150 projects with 50+clients across the globe. In addition, we had an amazing retention rate of about 80%. And now with Dezy It, we are mobilising Design Sprints; making it easier for all to adapt & scale.