I’m a designer working on platform experience at Kaleyra. Most of my work sits somewhere between how things are built, how they’re used, and how everything fits together.
I’ve been doing design work since 2010 - fifteen years of sketching, shipping, messing up, fixing, and figuring things out again. Before Kaleyra, I worked on civic tech platforms, publishing tools, and communication products - across teams that were just starting up, and others figuring out scale.
A while ago, I co-founded Saltmangotree, one of the early digital marketing studios in India. I led design and tech there and stayed on until it was acquired by a French company. Yes, we named it after a line from an Malayalam movie — an inside joke that stuck.
My path into all this started with curiosity around free software. That, combined with the early days of internet communities, led me to people asking similar questions. One thing led to another, and I found myself contributing to Swathanthra Malayalam Computing - a community building tools for Malayalam computing. I focused on type design and helped shape the group’s direction from a community side. In 2009, I designed Dyuthi Unicode Malayalam font, a Unicode Malayalam display font during Google Summer of Code. It was one of the first in that category—built with full complexity. I later released Rufscript, a Latin display typeface.
I’ve also worked on side projects like Malayaleegraphy, Chali Machine, and Kerala Designer Co.. Some were experiments, some collaborations, most came out of the itch to build and see what happens.
Over the years, I’ve spent time mentoring designers and early product folks — not just about tools or portfolios, but around the stuff that’s harder to Google. It usually comes from leading and managing design teams, and I try to adapt based on where someone is and what they’re trying to figure out. I enjoy these conversations - part advice, part collaboration, and often the start of something bigger.
Outside of work, I help out at Moonbowl, a cloud kitchen run by my partner. On busy days, I turn into the barback, the packer - whatever keeps the day running. I also enjoy manual coffee brewing and run occasional workshops for people who want to explore it.
I also read, watch films, and travel — always as a tourist, even in the cities I’ve lived in for years.