BOMBAYDC Edits: An in-depth look at founder Ankur Rander’s journey & vision

Introducing a new editorial series called BOMBAYDC Edits which will explore the people, principles, and processes behind our work, offering meaningful conversations and insights. We are kickstarting this as a collaboration with independent art & design journalist Payal Khandelwal.

When I first met Ankur Rander in 2024, our conversation quickly revealed a shared belief: the most effective digital products are born when design and technology are seamlessly integrated. This idea, while seemingly simple, is surprisingly rare in practice as design and tech teams often come from different agencies or work in silos even if they are within the same setup. It was good to know that BOMBAYDC was already moving in this direction. In fact, they recently separated their digital products company from their branding studio to focus exclusively on this belief.

We ended that meeting with a promise of future collaboration. Now, almost 18 months later, they have launched BOMBAYDC Edits — a new series of interviews and insights featuring Ankur, his team, and their network of clients and collaborators. To kick off the series, I had a long chat with Ankur about his personal journey, balancing creativity and leadership, the future of e-commerce, which is one of the key verticals BOMBAYDC is focused on, and the impact of AI, among other things.

Ankur’s journey began in a remote village in Rajasthan and took him to Mayo College boarding school in Ajmer, before landing in Mumbai for Computer Science Engineering. His travels then continued abroad, studying and working at Hyper Island in Sweden and Mori Inc. in Japan. He eventually returned to Mumbai to launch what was then known as Bombay Design Centre.

While he learnt a lot from his travels, his entrepreneurial and creative spirit was instilled quite early at home, thanks to his businessman father and artist mother. No wonder he started a scrappy design business called Zeugma Design Studio when he was just 19. From age 19 to 22, he freelanced under this studio for clients and agencies like Lowe Lintas, learning Photoshop and coding on the fly. After college, he was offered a job at Accenture and Lintas. He chose the latter to avoid a typical corporate job. The mix of design, engineering, and brand knowledge he gained at Lintas gave him a unique perspective.

After two and a half years at Lintas, he got a bit frustrated, though. “We were often asked to copy successful digital projects from other companies, but we failed because we didn't understand the underlying strategy and technology.” This frustration led him to study in Sweden. He initially wanted to work abroad, and studying became his foot in the door. But this soon shapeshifted into a transformative experience, one that would redefine his vision for the future.

Early work from Lintas. “As I look back, I still believe that good design was always meant to be simple.” - Ankur

Payal: What were some of your key learnings from your experiences at Hyper Island and Mori Inc. that you still implement in your work?

Ankur: The most important learning was global exposure and the value of creating really high-quality work. Working with people from almost 20 different countries gave me a five-year head start compared to my peers. I went to Hyper Island expecting to become a digital art director, but I came out realising that I could use my skills to solve larger problems.

From Sweden, I learned that design should be solution-focused, with a low cognitive load for the user. Swedes have had to deal with long, dark winters for generations, which forced them to be adaptable and figure out how to work together as a team. This created a culture of high-quality work with a zero-tolerance policy for unnecessary things. Much of our design language today is inspired by this Scandinavian approach of removing what isn't needed.

From my experience at Mori Inc., I learned about removing complexities and variables to the point where things are functional, with a touch of craziness. For example, a perfect pot isn't considered the most beautiful in Japan; one that's slightly bent has more character.

I finally combined all of these learnings with the cultural “chaos” of India. Our design work is positioned at the intersection of Scandinavian and Japanese minimalism and the vibrant, complex Indian culture. The engineering comes from India, and the design thinking comes from the global experiences.

How do you create a balance between the two, though - the global learning and the local cultural context of India?

My upbringing in a small village, life in a metro city, combined with my extensive travels, has exposed me to a wide spectrum of human experience. This journey from rural India to global cities like Tokyo has taught me the diverse ways people think, act, and form relationships. This unique background allows me to easily relate to and empathise with others, seeing their perspectives firsthand.

When clients share their problems, the idea is to really understand and empathize. The real magic happens when I connect this empathy with seemingly unrelated ideas and solutions. I've observed innovative approaches in various fields that have nothing to do with my clients' challenges, yet I can see how to juxtapose those solutions to build something entirely new. Often, the best solutions are hidden in plain sight; you just need to connect the dots. And this ability to take global insights and apply them to local challenges is actually the key to what I do.

But a great idea is only half the battle. You must also be able to build trust and convince the client about the idea.

What were the early days of Bombay Design Centre like?

Our first employee was a Spanish creative director, a friend (Enio) I had studied with, and then we went together to Japan to work. We tried working on projects with agencies like Lintas and Ogilvy, but quickly realised we couldn't be just a third-party vendor. We needed to work directly with clients to maintain control over the kind of work we wanted to do.

Our first big breakthrough came from Kotak Mahindra Bank. We were hired for a small project, but the client noticed that we asked a lot of questions and were focused on rethinking the problem. Once we were vetted by a major brand like Kotak, it became easier to get other big projects. We brought a fresh perspective from our global experience, and those who saw the value in that started giving us work.

Did the need to have complete control led to the creation of an in-house tech team as well?

Yes, our decision to build an in-house tech team was a major turning point. We had done projects where another company would take our high-quality design work and completely ruin it in the coding phase. This was a failure we had to learn from. Inspired by Apple's philosophy of end-to-end control, we recognised the need to exert complete control over our work from start to finish. We wanted to ensure that what we presented to the client was what the end user would actually experience. The huge success of our first end-to-end project for Kokoyu Camlin (whom we are still working with) proved that this approach was the right one.

“Our decision to build an in-house tech team was a major turning point. We had done projects where another company would take our high-quality design work and completely ruin it in the coding phase. This was a failure we needed to learn from.”

Now that the company has grown so large, how do you balance being a creative director, running the operations, and being a leader?

My biggest professional and personal influence has been my former boss in Japan, Morihiro Harano. He was a creative director who ran a successful business. He was strategic and could discuss business effectively. He busted my mental block that creatives can't understand numbers.

When I started the company, I was pushed to do everything, from design to accounting. And I realised that business is mostly logic. If you ask the right questions, you can solve any problem as the path of analysis, planning, strategy, and execution is the same, regardless of the subject matter.

My role has evolved of course, as the team has grown. When it was a small setup, I could be involved in every single process. As we’ve grown, we have created a partnership structure where I work closely with someone until I'm confident they’ve adopted 60-70% of my way of thinking, working, and problem solving. Once they've reached that point, they then work independently, and I only intervene when necessary.

The idea is that people need to genuinely care and think deeply about a problem. This way, you automatically become responsible for your work and let your creativity flow freely. As a leader, my role is to constantly push for high quality work by benchmarking against global standards.

What have been some of the key challenges in running a digital products company?

Indian consumers are quite difficult. Due to immense competition, they are spoiled for choice and want everything: free delivery, the option to pay later, easy and fast returns, etc. We lack discipline, and we don’t like following any rules. All of us are like that — it’s funny! This creates a challenging market where we have to solve a hundred edge cases in every problem. Most of the time, the client’s answer is to "balance it," which can sometimes take away the magic of a simple, elegant solution.

Another roadblock has been dealing with clients who are used to working with either traditional creative agencies or tech agencies. Often, the work is led either by marketing teams who don't fully understand tech or by tech teams who don't appreciate the nuances of design in the other case. When clients from either of these agencies come to us for a solution that combines both, the lack of understanding becomes a major challenge.

What are some categories that are on BOMBAYDC’s wishlist?

Our top wishlist category to work with is the government digital services. It's a missed opportunity, and I feel for the people struggling with these services. We've tried to engage with them, but the operational demands are a lot for us right now.

Fintech is another great category that impacts the country in a major way, but we are already doing a lot of work in this sector. I'm also passionate about premium e-commerce brands. Many brands spend a lot on marketing and their physical stores, yet their digital stores feel like a generic template. We hope to help them create a digital experience that matches the quality of their brand.

“The idea is that people need to genuinely care and think deeply about a problem. This way you automatically become responsible for your work and let your creativity flow freely. As a leader, my job is to constantly push for great quality work by benchmarking against global standards.”

You recently also spoke about the need for greater inclusivity in e-commerce, specifically through vernacular languages and voice technology. This is something you also mentioned that you are actively prototyping. Could you tell me more about this?

Right now, most digital products and services – outside of giants like WhatsApp, YouTube, or UPI – aren't used by the majority of the country. In e-commerce, only Amazon and the likes have reached these markets because they have the resources to build trust and educate users, and the bandwidth to reach these places. But the other 99% of businesses lack this capability. They're trying to build their own e-commerce platforms, but they can't reach people who aren't familiar with digital interfaces.

Think about a brand like Godrej. They sell products all over India, but their website is inaccessible to a large portion of the population because of language barriers and a lack of familiarity with the user flow. This is where AI is going to be a game-changer. With AI-powered solutions, a person can simply speak to an e-commerce site in their local language and say, ‘I want to buy a fridge.’ The system can show them options with details in their local language. On a fashion e-commerce site, for example, one could say in their own local language, ‘I want black shoes,’ and then filter it further by saying ‘I don't want any heels in the shoes,’ and the system will automatically filter the results. This makes the experience not only intuitive but also accessible to everyone.

How fast do you think we will see this get adopted?

I believe in the ‘chasm theory’ where early adopters (10-15%) take one to two years to experiment, and then the larger mass adopts it over the next three to seven years. Adoption is fastest when a new technology offers a level of convenience that has no competition. Quick commerce is a perfect example — the convenience of getting something in 10 minutes is so far beyond any other option that people adopted it instantly. I believe some AI-powered products will be adopted just as fast as they'll offer this unprecedented simplicity and convenience.

In what other ways have you been implementing AI in your work? Do you see any future challenges with AI?

AI is a game-changer because it eliminates so many steps in the workflow, and we can now build things for the users that we've only ever wished we could.

This radical shift means that if you're not constantly experimenting with new workflows, you'll be left behind. The technology requires a radical re-evaluation of every process — from delivery to operations. In the future, real tech knowledge won't be about sitting down and coding. It will be about understanding how different systems work, how to integrate them, and how to build solutions. For example, a pizza shop owner today might manually track inventory based on past experience. With cheap, open-source AI models, the system can use data to accurately predict daily inventory needs. Similarly, a clothing manufacturer can train AI to perform quality checks at 20 times the speed of a human. And the cost of this kind of tech has plummeted, making it accessible to a wide range of businesses.

While I do believe workflows will be completely transformed by AI, it's a misconception that AI can do everything. For a 10-step process, AI might automate three steps by 80% and two steps by 20%, but the remaining five steps will still require human input.

The number one demand from clients today is efficiency and cost, which will be enabled by AI. They want work that is cheaper and faster, but not necessarily higher quality. This is problematic, but this is the reality we're dealing with. So it's best to build solutions with the new technology rather than sticking to the old ways. This is why I'm glad we have a strong foundation in both design and tech.

What’s the scariest and most exciting thing about the digital future?

The scariest thing about the future of digital products is the possibility that the medium itself could become obsolete. The mobile phone has dominated for the last 20 years, but what if a new medium emerges? Thankfully, we are prepared as we build end-to-end solutions. The medium might change but the technology products are here to stay.

Apart from this, everything else is an opportunity to build and grow, and that’s the exciting part.

What’s your vision for BOMBAYDC in the next few years?

Our vision is to enable more Indian businesses to use high-quality design and engineering in their products. We want to continue building things that are beautiful, effectively solve people's problems, and are just magical to use. And when people really enjoy using something, whether it's an app or a service, it's good for them and it’s good for the business.