Design & Research Leadership
Designing outcomes. Shaping product experiences. Leading teams.
I’m Nishant Kaku, Director of Design & Research at Housing.com, a proptech platform with 12M+ monthly users. Before that, I led design at Cashfree Payments and Domino’s India. Open to Head of Design and Design Director roles in any industry.
20 years in design
Team of 7, reporting to the CPO
Executive MBA, ISB
Gurugram, open to relocation
Work
How I lead
Four things I do in every team.
01
Build the team
Grew Jubilant’s design team from 1 to 15. At Housing, set up design critiques and a competency framework that set the quality bar.
02
Put research into decisions
Built research into Housing’s design team. A 140-renter survey and buyer research reshaped the new-projects roadmap.
03
Lead as a player-coach
I set Housing’s design language and built Bricks myself, cutting component delivery from 2 weeks to 2 days. At Jubilant, I designed Popeyes online ordering with one junior designer.
04
Sit at the product table
Moved Housing design from a service model to product co-ownership, working directly with the CPO.
Experience
The short version.
2025 NOW
Housing.com · Director, Design & Research
+40K leads a month
2022 – 25
Cashfree Payments · Associate Director, UX
17% signup → KYC lift
2020 – 22
Jubilant FoodWorks · Lead Manager, UX
₹20 Cr incremental revenue
2014 – 20
Info Edge (99acres, Shiksha) · Principal Designer, UX
150% YoY ↑ registrations
2005 – 14
India Today · Paytm · Brentwoods
Art direction and visual design
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