The Guiding Hand

After an exciting career with some of India’s leading start-ups, Sunit Singh Sehgal has now slipped into an advisory role where his experience truly counts

Tell us about your journey in design.

SS: While pursuing a BFA at Sir J. J. School of Art, and later the Master of Design program from Industrial Design Center, IIT Mumbai, I started taking on projects ranging from murals and commissioned artwork to print design and motion graphics. After completing design school in 2003, I ran a design firm with a friend for about a year. By 2005, I went on to work with a small Mumbai-based boutique design firm, Paper Plane, where I designed websites and web applications for clients in both India and the US. Along the way, I also worked on burrp.com which was one of the earliest online local restaurant guides in India. I then moved to Bangalore to join Yahoo! - which was a very short stint, less than a year. I joined Cleartrip in 2010, where I did some of my most significant work. It was a time when mobile was just emerging as a platform. I got the opportunity to lead the design of the mobile web, followed by the native mobile apps and a major redesign of all the desktop products. As a designer, it was a dream to work on Cleartrip as it was, and continues to remain, one of India’s most loved products. After five exciting years, I moved on to join Ola in 2015, where I built and set up a design team from scratch.

After about a year I decided to turn to consulting. I am a partner and co-founder at Design Capital, a design advisory firm in Bangalore through which we mentor design and product teams at various digital product companies. I continue to help the design and product teams at Ola and Cleartrip in an advisory capacity.

How has formal education impacted your career?