I didn’t plan this career. It kind of cornered me.

I started out studying engineering. Like most people, I thought I knew where I was headed. But somewhere in my first year, that plan quietly started to fall apart.

It didn’t happen in a classroom.

It happened at midnight.

A couple of friends and I started a late-night food delivery venture on campus. What began as a scrappy experiment turned into a small café we called Milestone. We had no playbook. Just instinct, energy, and a willingness to figure things out as we went.

At some point, we needed branding.

I had always liked sketching, so I decided to take a shot at it myself. No formal training. No expectations. Just trying to make something that worked.

That was it. That was the entry.

Not a course. Not a plan. Just curiosity meeting necessity.

We ran Milestone for about a year before going our separate ways. Different paths, different priorities. But by then, something had already shifted for me.

I started freelancing.

First in web and backend development. Then slowly, design started finding its way back in—through small requests, side projects, experiments. I followed it.

I didn’t enroll in a design school. Instead, I built my own. I pulled curriculums from some of the best programs in the world, broke them down, and learned piece by piece. YouTube became my classroom. Client work became my test.

Somewhere along the way, things picked up.

I started sharing my work online. An audience grew—40,000 people. More importantly, so did the work. More clients. More projects. More momentum.

From the outside, it looked like things were working.

But internally, something felt off.

I was busy all the time—but not growing in the way I wanted.

I was producing, but not deepening. Solving, but not evolving.

That’s when I realized something I probably should have understood earlier:

I don’t follow linear paths.
I start things out of curiosity—but I stay for craft.

And craft needs friction. It needs feedback. It needs people who are better than you.

Freelancing gave me freedom. But I was tired of figuring everything out alone.

I wanted mentorship.
I wanted higher standards.
I wanted to go deeper into design.

That’s what led me to Nykaa.

Today, I care about work that does more than just look good.

I care about design that actually solves something.
About clarity over noise.
About the small details most people miss—and how they quietly shape the whole experience.

I’m still learning. Still building. Still following curiosity.

But now, I’m a lot more intentional about the craft I stay for.