🎯 A bit about Tekie

Tekie is a school-focused platform that uses storytelling and immersive content with a hands-on approach to teach coding and new-age skills. Tekie raised $1.5 Mn from GSV, Multiply Ventures, and Better Capital, and was later acquired by Uolo (raised $25.5 Mn), driving over 80% of their top-line. Currently Tekie serves 500K+ students across 1000+ schools.

My Role at Tekie

Grew with the company and team from an intern to a core founding member, establishing and leading the entire design function. I owned the entire creative output: the core product ecosystem, brand, and the creative side of the IP.

A true 0 → 1 marathon. Building the team, the systems, and the benchmarks for a company to stand out in the already crowded ed-tech space.

This meant shaping the product roadmap with leadership one day, and directing an animation shot or designing a textbook the next—a constant switch between high-level strategy and deep, hands-on craft.

Product Design & Strategy

Built and scaled the Product Design function, hiring and mentoring a team of 4 product designers. Established the design culture at Tekie, implementing rituals, critique sessions, and workflows that ensured a high bar for craft and seamless collaboration with engineering. I also drove strategic execution by embedding deeply with Product and Engineering leadership to shape the product roadmap, translate complex goals into clear design specifications, and ensure a polished user experience was shipped with every release. Ours was a field-driven, user-centered design process, conducting continuous research and usability testing by visiting over 30+ schools to validate all design decisions against real-world classroom challenges. As a byproduct, we built a multi-platform design system from scratch, accelerating development and ensuring a cohesive user experience across the entire ecosystem.

Student Learning Platform

A gamified learning platform designed for students. Features included a personalised dashboard, a 'Coder's Journey' with interactive modules (quizzes, videos, slides), a homework and streak system, real-time sync with the live class, a collaborative student community, and a "Code Garage" sandbox. The platform integrated professional tools like Figma, Canva, and Scratch and featured built-in code editors, ebook viewers, and a syntax dictionary called 'Cheat Sheet'.

Teacher Management App

A comprehensive live classroom command center. Features included a real-time dashboard to monitor student progress and identify blockers, automated attendance and grading, robust classroom management tools, curriculum planning, access to student workspaces, and auto-generated performance reports for school administration.

Interal Ops & CMS

The backbone of the company's operations. Features included a centralized school, batch, and student management system, a modular CMS for dynamically building and deploying courses, a content versioning system, and a dynamic scheduling engine to manage thousands of weekly classes.

Brand & Marketing

• Forged the entire Tekie brand identity from the ground up, creating a vibrant and trustworthy visual language that stood out in the crowded ed-tech space. This foundational work included the logo, color palette, typography, and illustration style that defined the brand for students, parents, and educators.

• Drove the creative strategy for the initial B2C launch, designing all assets to build brand love and community trust. This included executing campaigns for community events and festivals, creating high-conversion landing pages, all of which supported a successful $1.5M seed funding round.

• Spearheaded the creative strategy for the B2B pivot post funding, designing all sales enablement materials for a 100+ person nationwide sales team and pioneering a unique co-branding partnership strategy with top-tier schools, providing them with bespoke marketing collateral.

• Directed high-budget ad campaigns by coordinating with leading external creative agencies. Your role spanned the entire process, from initial planning and storyboarding to providing on-set creative direction during ad shoots and overseeing post-production.

Creative Direction & IP Development

Animated Series for various courses:

• Provided creative and technical direction for the “World’s 1st Animated Series on Coding,” a cornerstone of the Tekie IP.
• Established the creative benchmark for a team of 30+ artists (animators, storyboarders, scriptwriters) by personally directing the pilot episode for each new series—overseeing everything from pre-production and character design to teaching directions, music, VFX, and post-production.
• Collaborated with world-class talent, including one of India's leading animation studios (known for work on Marvel's Wolverine) and artists with experience on Rick & Morty and Ubisoft titles.

Coding Textbooks for Grades 1-8:

• Spearheaded the creation of a first-of-its-kind line of NEP-compliant, comic-style coding textbooks in a unique storytelling format. Led the prototyping and testing process with schools, personally setting the design and readability benchmarks for the series.
• Led the creative direction for the books, managing a team of 30+ illustrators and writers to bring the technical curriculum to life through characters and storytelling.
• Designed the unique packaging and branding for the physical book sets, creating a "wow factor" that aligned with the core IP and appealed directly to students.

Journey Reflection