Professional Experience Hiran Venugopalan

Sixteen years building product design organisations from scratch, across agencies, startups, and enterprise software, most of it spent scaling design through acquisitions and company growth, more often rebuilding a practice than starting one clean.

DGM, Product Design Tata Communications Oct 2023 – Present

Leads product design for Tata Communications' Customer Interaction Suite, the CPaaS, CCaaS, Workflow Builder, and AI-first communication products that came out of folding Kaleyra into a much larger platform.

Director, Design Kaleyra Apr 2020 – Oct 2023

Built the Product Design function from nothing, then spent three years bringing together communication platforms that had been built independently in different countries into one product with one design system.

Director, Design Quintype Feb 2016 – Mar 2020

Built and led Quintype's Product Design team as the platform evolved from a headless CMS into a suite of publishing products. Led the productisation of a services-driven website implementation workflow into a self-service visual website builder, significantly reducing customer onboarding time.

Lead UX & Visual Designer Bang the Table Jan 2015 – Jan 2016

Designed the theming system behind Bang the Table's civic engagement platform to survive heavy customisation without breaking, and separately led the work that made WCAG accessibility a real part of the product instead of a checklist.

Co-Founder, Design+Tech saltmangotree Dec 2010 – Dec 2014

Co-founded one of India's early digital and social media agencies, and watched it grow from a small studio to close to ninety people before it was acquired, running design and technology through most of that stretch.

UXFOSS 2025 – Present

Founded UXFOSS to bring product design into free and open source software. Completed around six projects in its first year, working directly with maintainers through design contributions, mentorship, and documentation.

Design Mentoring 2020 – Present

Mentored designers through ADPList and Topmate, on career decisions, portfolio reviews, and the move into design leadership, working with both early-career designers and those stepping into their first leadership role.

Kerala Designers Collaborative 2018 – 2023

Co-founded a volunteer-led community connecting designers across Kerala through meetups, workshops, and shared projects. Active through the pandemic and the job shifts that followed, helping network over 3,000 designers.

Swathanthra Malayalam Computing 2007 – Present

One of the largest free and open source software communities working on Indian language computing. Contributed through design, coordination, and organising events, and designed Dyuthi, one of the earliest Unicode ornamental Malayalam typefaces.

Product Design Leadership · Design Team Building · Design Systems · Enterprise Product Design · B2B & SaaS Product Design · Information Architecture · Design Operations