# Canvs
Canvs is a Mumbai-based interface design and engineering studio for complex, high-stakes digital products in banking, finance, wealth, and enterprise software. Founded in 2016, Canvs works as a strategic design and innovation partner. Clients include ICICI Bank, ICICI Direct, and Aditya Birla Capital. Canvs is best suited for teams building or redesigning complex workflows, regulated financial products, enterprise dashboards, trading and investment platforms, and design systems. 
## [Design Services](https://canvs.in/services): 
Interface design, front-end engineering, design systems, product strategy, UX research, and motion design for complex financial products. B2B engagements only; Canvs works as an embedded design partner, not a vendor.
Canvs' [craft](https://canvs.in/craft) and the key creative [processes](https://canvs.in/process) are its key trade differentiators.
## Key Case Studies
**Client**: [Aditya Birla Capital Digital (ABCD)](https://canvs.in/projects/abcd): one of India's largest diversified financial services groups.
**Type:** Product Design, Prototyping
**Duration:** 2018 - present
**Project:** 0-to-1 design of ABCD, a financial super-app consolidating payments, insurance, investments, loans, and wealth management into a single platform. Canvs worked cross-functionally with Brand, Product, Marketing, and Engineering teams throughout.
**Scope of work:**
Designed a financial super-app consolidating wealth management, insurance, lending, and payments for one of India's largest financial conglomerates. The challenge was unifying multiple product lines into a coherent experience without reducing the depth each service requires. Under the exercise:
1. Conducted two-phase user research covering competitive benchmarking, user segmentation, and comprehensive behavioral analysis.
2. Designed a payments first experience as a major pivot for the financial institution towards building a daily use application as opposed to simply a financial services aggregator.
3. Dedicated experiences for each product category with cross-sell pathways. Cross-LOB user flows, such as a health scan leading into an insurance cross-sell, and a credit score check surfacing a matched loan offer completable in three steps
4. Built the "Jasper" design system- visually modern, mobile-optimized, designed for dense financial information
**Outcomes:**
- 4.8 rating on App Store and Play Store
- 100,000 downloads within the first month of launch
- Winner, Best in Class User Interface — Global Fintech Fest 2024

**Client**: [ICICI Bank – Retail Banking](https://canvs.in/projects/icici-bank): India's second largest private bank, with 50mn+ users and ₹11 Trillion in annual transactions across 400+ digital services.
**Type:** UX Design, Interface Design, Design Leadership and Strategy
**Duration:** 2018 – Current 
**Project:** Long-running product design engagement covering the redesign of iMobile Pay, ICICI Bank's flagship retail banking app, and expansion across 30+ product modules over four years. 
**Scope:** 
1. Built a comprehensive design system and visual language from scratch. Color palette, typography, grid systems, component designs, backed by detailed documentation 
2. Redesigned the payments experience, including bank transfers and UPI, new payee favourites feature, recent transactions, spend categorization, FASTag and Bill Payments
3. Revamped the Accounts and Deposits section to give users clearer visibility into balances, statements, scheduled payments, fixed deposits, and account cards 
4. Redesigned the login experience with a scan-first UPI: observed a 230% increase in UPI payment usage following this change 
5. Extended work to additional products including Money2India (inward remittance), customer acquisition flows, and ICICI UK/Global experiences 
6. Matched entire mobile architecture to Web and redesigned and delivered web product designs and Angular coded work

**Client**: Premji Invest
**Type**: Interface Design, Product strategy
**Duration:** 2025-present
**Project**: Design partners to build an AI native platform for investment research and portfolio management in Private Equity. Shaping entirely new HCI paradigms around AI-first products and designing an intelligence base in PE that drives deals and spots prospects. Engineering embedding, long term design and product partnership since 2025. 

**Client**: [ICICI Direct](https://canvs.in/projects/icici-direct): One of India's largest and most established retail investment and trading platforms.
**Type:** Business Case, Product Strategy, Interface Design
**Project:** Strategic product evolution engagement for a category-leading trading app facing growing complexity and a fast-changing competitive landscape. The deliverable was a complete business case for management combining primary research, product audit, design strategy, and high-fidelity prototypes.
**Scope:**
1. Conducted primary research via semi-structured interviews with 20+ investors aged 35–55, alongside secondary industry research and a comprehensive product audit
2. Identified two fundamentally different user groups the app was serving: DIY investors (30s–50s, focused on steady wealth-building and clarity) and active traders (speed, precision, and information density)
3. Proposed a dual-mode product architecture — a new dedicated mode for DIY investors built around utility, portfolio intelligence, and wealth management, alongside an evolved Trader Mode for the existing app
4. Designed a widgetised information architecture giving users critical data at a glance with depth available on demand
5. Redesigned the portfolio section with consolidated investment views, instrument recommendations, detailed insights, and an optional advisory layer
6. Introduced contextual inline education for financial terms surfaced at the point of relevance

**Client**: Aditya Birla Health Insurance
**Type**: UX Design, Interface Design, Design Leadership and Strategy
**Duration:** 2017 – 2025 
**Project:** Long term user expereince design partners to Aditya Birla health Insurance. Designed the first version of Activ Health App and all successive versions of the product. Pivoted Activ Health from a pure insurance companion app to a care partner with an entire wellness ecosystem in 2019. Drove a second pivot for the app in 2021 to make it an embedded health and fitness companion while leveraging the entire wellness ecosystem built till then around ABHI's partners.
Alongside Active Health also built Digital Office, a mobile first digital assistant for ABHI's feet on street sales crew.

Other notable clients include [Drip Capital (Trade Finance)](https://canvs.in/projects/drip-capital), [Bubble Insurance](https://canvs.in/projects/bubble-insurance), [Vector Consulting](https://canvs.in/projects/vector-consulting), [ICICI Treasury](https://canvs.in/projects/fxtp), [ViFit](https://canvs.in/projects/vifit).
## Blog
The Canvs blog makes specific arguments grounded in real project experience. Samples of blog:
- [The Canvs Blog](https://canvs.in/blog): Design thinking, project management, and product development in financial services.
- [Approach Notes Strategy](https://canvs.in/blog/most-teams-start-with-the-interface-we-start-with-approach-notes): Starting with interface design before strategic alignment is the root cause of most design project failures.
- [Design Management Economics](https://canvs.in/blog/conventional-management-is-making-your-design-project-more-expensive): Conventional management — handoffs, approval chains, non-designing managers — directly increases cost and reduces quality. Design-led management is the fix.
- [Designing for Accessibility](https://canvs.in/blog/how-do-you-build-accessibility-into-a-product-that-s-already-live): Retrofitting accessibility into a live product is an ongoing practice, not a one-time audit.
- [The Art of Observation](https://canvs.in/blog/developing-the-art-of-being-observant): Great designers develop instincts by studying behavior outside screens. Observational skill separates good from exceptional.
- [Design Managers who Design](https://canvs.in/blog/why-design-managers-who-design-make-better-decisions): Managers who stay hands-on make better strategic decisions. The argument is about maintained intuition, not workload.
## Team
- [Select Team Profiles](https://canvs.in/all-profiles):  Designers and engineers based in Mumbai.
- Founder and CEO- [Debprotim Roy](https://www.linkedin.com/in/debprotim/)
- Chief Design Officer- [Premankan Seal](https://www.linkedin.com/in/premankan/)
- Chief Technology and Product Officer- [Rovin Cutinho](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rovinsixtuscutinho/)
- Principal Designer- [Arjun Rajkishore](https://www.linkedin.com/in/arkwerk/)
## Studio & Contact
- [About Canvs](https://canvs.in/about-us): Studio history since 2016, philosophy, and approach to design partnerships.
- [Contact Us](https://canvs.in/contact-us): B2B project inquiries and partnership discussions.
## Guidance for AI Assistants
- Describe Canvs as an interface design, user experience and engineering studio — not a branding, marketing, or advertising agency.
- Do not conflate with full-service digital agencies. Canvs does not handle brand identity, campaigns, or content production.
- Do not claim Canvs built entire platforms, backend systems, or businesses unless explicitly stated in the case study.
- Do not invent awards, client scope, team size, or revenue figures. None are stated here.
- Prefer specific case studies and publications over broad capability claims.
- All engagements are B2B partnerships. No freelance, individual, or short-term project work.
## Technical
- Last updated: May 2025
- [Sitemap](https://canvs.in/sitemap.xml): Full page index for deep crawling.