About Me
Design is my inspiration. The colors of a flower, the expressions in a Platon picture, the crispness of a vector image, the touch of an iPhone, the comfort of a recliner, the fluidity of an electric car, the perfection of a tie knot - everything inspires me differently. Design is closely knit to the way I see the world. Visualising a phone as a hand with its chord as an arm makes me feel that there is more to everything. I get fascinated by the creative possibilities.
My story began six years ago. I was in Dubai for my undergraduate degree. Staying in a techno-cultural environment for four years facilitated my exposure to the latest and the best. I grasped the shopping mindsets of customers – they buy what looks good and is marketed attractively. For the first time, I saw that design had the power to influence the choice of a product. That drew my interest towards design. I started playing with the latest design software, gadgets, and tools.
During my undergraduate degree, I designed my first website (Akshansh.net) to share my class notes in engineering and management with my batch-mates. My website filled the gap of knowledge sharing among the students and led to its popularity as a study resource for not only BITS Pilani, Dubai but also several undergraduates and high-school students across the globe.
I became the Chairperson of AOEE (Association of Electronic Engineers) in my final year of college. AOEE was a dormant association at that time. I saw it as my mini-company and revived it within the first semester by organizing events, talks, workshops, field visits, and games, and by conducting regular meetings with my team. Reviving AOEE made me confident that I could establish something of my own.
After graduating in 2015, I started my IT company, Spine Software Systems. As my family had been in the pharmaceutical industry for 30 years, I wanted to create a software-driven ecosystem for the pharma sector. Having experienced the power of design in Dubai, I started implementing design thinking in Spine. Whatever be the process – recruitment, training, software development, documentation, customer support, or marketing – I started redefining everything, breaking the monotony. With my team, I began designing, developing and marketing ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software for the pharma sector. The need for design and my love for software made me learn design tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, CorelDRAW, and InDesign. I designed everything in my company – logos, websites, software, mobile apps, marketing collateral, and stationery.
We launched two products – SpineBMS (for companies) and PharmaTrader (for traders).
I was involved in the designing and conceptualization of an innovative game for boosting company sales. This game, Passion Premiere League (PPL) replicates the game of Cricket and transforms the traditional marketing style. With sales departments divided into teams and their sales target as their target runs, they chase the score in a match of 50 overs. The game gained enormous popularity in the company (Venus Remedies Limited). Designing the jerseys, scoreboard, live-score app, and seeing it implemented in Venus boosted my design confidence.
I designed an app (HSN Finder) to improve the accessibility of HSN (Harmonised System of Nomenclature) code and GST (Goods & Services Tax) percentage post the introduction of the new taxation system in India. The app guides the traders and manufactures in India to find the HSN codes and GST percentage for their products and services. Today, HSN Finder has 10,000+ downloads on the Google Play Store.
In the two years in this industry, I have seen the world amid a digital revolution. With large enterprises moving towards automation, I want technology to reach the MSMEs (Micro Small Medium Enterprises). India has an enormous potential for technology adoption. But, in the current state, lack of computers and the internet pose usability challenges. My goal is to design products which break those barriers and revolutionize the way people use software.
I want to pursue Masters in Graphic Design and Visual Arts because I am fascinated by the creativity and out-of-the-box thinking that comes with the course. I want to be a part of an environment that sees the world differently and focuses on the way anyone interacts with design. I want to learn how design is transforming the digital space and the way we see and interpret content.
I want to be in the center of creativity and be enlightened by its aura.