In this extended interview, Kaushik Mali from Product Stories speaks with Rohan Mishra - a product designer who has worked at Zomato, lead product design for International Markets at Urban Company, and runs a growing mentorship community called Design Sundays. The conversation explores community-building, mentorship frameworks for early-career designers, lessons from building complex products at Zomato, and what it takes to design and launch services across countries with different user behaviors.

Table of Contents

• Why this interview matters
• About the interviewee
• Interview
• Rapid-fire Questions (as asked at the end of the interview)
• Expanded Insights and Practical Checklists
• Case studies and examples from the conversation
• Common pitfalls and how to avoid them
• How to get involved with Design Sundays
• FAQ
• Final thoughts and takeaways

Why this interview matters

This conversation is a practical guide for designers, community builders, and product people who want to: start and sustain a community, scale teaching and mentorship, or ship thoughtful products into new markets. Rohan's lessons are drawn from running Design Sundays while working full-time at high-growth companies, and from hands-on product work at Zomato and Urban Company. Below, we present the interview in a question-and-answer format, followed by extended commentary, practical checklists, and an FAQ to help you act on the ideas discussed.

About the interviewee

Rohan Mishra is a product designer who helps companies build products that serve users and deliver business value. His professional path started from engineering - he learned coding, freelanced, completed internships, and gradually moved into product design. He has worked with Zomato, Urban Company, and several YC-funded startups. He also founded Design Sundays, a community that mentors and upskills early-career designers through workshops, portfolio reviews, and peer learning.

Interview

Kaushik: Who is Rohan? Tell us about your journey into product design.

Rohan: I started from an engineering background - writing code, freelancing for organizations and government projects, and doing many internships to identify what I really wanted to do. Over time I migrated into product design: I build products that solve user problems while aligning with business goals. My path wasn't from a traditional design school - I learned by doing, by talking with people, and by building projects. That practical experience led me to roles at Zomato and Urban Company, and also to starting Design Sundays to help others who were navigating the same career transition.

Kaushik: What is Design Sundays? How did it start and what problem does it solve?

Rohan: Design Sundays began from an observation: communities can accelerate growth. Back in college, I helped build a student community focused on placements and skills. I saw how a shared goal and organized learning made a real difference. Later, when I saw dozens or hundreds of aspiring designers struggling to get mentorship, I wanted to build a space where people could learn from experienced practitioners.

Design Sundays is a mentorship-first community. We help designers prepare for careers - not just to get a job but to grow in the role, transition to freelancing, or become solopreneurs. We achieve this through three main offerings:

• Live sessions and workshops with practitioners (product design, UX research, visual design)
• Structured learning programs and short courses (e.g., eight-week project cohorts)
• Portfolio reviews, referrals, and connections to hiring teams

Our north star is enabling members to learn from people smarter than them and to give back. That dual approach helps the community remain valuable.

Kaushik: Starting a community is easy. Staying consistent and scaling while juggling a full-time job is hard. What challenges have you faced while managing and growing Design Sundays?

Rohan: You're right - starting is easy; consistency is the real challenge. I began Design Sundays alone and it slowly grew into a four-person team with specific responsibilities: content, growth, operations, and partnerships. Running a community requires sustained energy, and two things kept me going:

1. Intrinsic energy from conversations - I genuinely recharge by talking to people and learning from them.
2. Remembering why I started - returning to the original mission when things felt off-course.

Growth is tricky. Early traction can plateau unless you introduce new value. We follow an 80/20 rule: 80% of our effort stays on what works (hosting sessions, mentorship), 20% is experimentation (reels, conferences, workshops). That helps us iterate without losing the core offering.

Practical issues we've faced:

• Building a team where members are comfortable speaking to external people - some volunteers are great at execution but shy when it comes to outreach.
• Monetization and funding - often we invested from our pockets before sustainable revenue streams materialized.
• Fear of lower engagement - every season we worry about whether attendance will drop.
• Listening to community feedback - we constantly survey participants to ask the single question: "What one thing could have helped you more?"

Long-term consistency matters: community work is a five-to-ten-year game.

Kaushik: You also mentor people across platforms. What kind of mentorship does Design Sundays provide? What should an early-career designer expect?

Rohan: There are three primary mentorship approaches we use:

1. 1:1 guidance and portfolio reviews - We begin by understanding where a candidate is in their journey. Are they a beginner? Switching from another field? Do they have design fundamentals or just tools knowledge? The feedback must be tailored to the individual's specific gap (hard skills vs. confidence).
2. Connecting to resources - If someone needs a course, a template, or an external mentor, we recommend resources or make introductions.
3. Workshops when multiple people report the same pain point - e.g., if many ask about UX research, we invite a specialist to run a workshop.

We also run cohort-style projects like "Product Design Launchpad": an 8-week program where participants build a case study from scratch, get peer feedback, and simulate hiring scenarios. These cohorts help solve two common problems at once: skill gaps and confidence. I shared an example of a student who already had the craft but lacked confidence; the structured cohort helped her produce work consistently, and she received multiple offers within weeks.

Kaushik: How do you assess someone who reaches out for help? Many people simply ask "How do I get into UX?" without context.

Rohan: We start by asking clarifying questions. Good mentorship requires diagnosing the problem. A typical intake conversation covers:

• Background: education, prior job, transferable skills
• Work examples: what projects they’ve actually completed (not hypothetical)
• Career goal: are they seeking a junior role, switching to product design, or wanting to freelance?
• Pain points: confidence, hiring process, craft (research, interaction design, visuals)

Only after diagnosis do we prescribe targeted interventions: a course, a portfolio rewrite, behavioral interview prep, or a referral.

Kaushik: What does the roadmap for Design Sundays look like? What are you doubling down on?

Rohan: We built a three-to-four-year vision that breaks down into smaller missions. Right now, the next six months are dedicated to the "learn" phase. Practically that means:

• Bringing back the YouTube series to share free learning content
• Running more workshops and cohort-based courses
• Creating repeatable learning paths so that someone can go from zero to portfolio-ready

Longer-term, we aim to extend into "prepare" and "grow": interview preparation, connecting people to jobs, and productizing mentorship services. We tried product offerings previously but didn't get strong product-market fit; that taught us to focus on learning-first, collect rigorous feedback, and then iterate towards a product that scales.

Kaushik: Let's switch focus to your Zomato days. What was your role and what were the big lessons you learned there?

Rohan: Joining Zomato was a career-defining experience. I joined when the design team was tiny - I was the fifth person on the team rebuilding momentum after turnover. The culture prized bold action, experimentation, and owning end-to-end outcomes.

One of my first projects was a large tool for restaurants to build and manage their menus. It involved complex product modeling (e.g., pizza variants, toppings, sizes, combo pricing) while keeping the UI simple for non-technical restaurant owners. The scope was massive: multiple stakeholders from sales, operations, engineering, and the restaurants themselves. Three main lessons from that time:

1. Stakeholder alignment is a muscle: convincing five people is different from aligning 20 stakeholders with different metrics and incentives.
2. Ownership and trust: teams expected you to go find answers - you couldn't wait for permission; you had to run experiments and iterate.
3. Hiring scales everything: as the team grew, maintaining quality hiring was a constant challenge.

Zomato taught me how to operate under ambiguity, ship quickly, and focus on high-impact product mandates rather than incremental polish alone.

Kaushik: After Zomato you joined Urban Company. How does design change when you're building for different countries?

Rohan: Urban Company operates in many countries: India, Singapore, Australia, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and soon the US. Each market has distinct customer behaviors, regulatory constraints, and service models. For example:

• Personal grooming offerings: a feature that suggests complementary services like "shave" or "beard trim" when booking a haircut makes sense in India, but not in certain East Asian markets where facial hair prevalence is low.
• Recurring cleaning services: in Dubai, hiring live-in domestic help is expensive or regulated; customers prefer scheduled, recurring professional cleaning (we built a product called Sprout that automates recurring bookings and payments).
• Local partners vs individual professionals: in some markets we partner with companies that employ professionals (Dubai), whereas in India we might work directly with individual professionals. That changes how we design flows for onboarding, scheduling, and payments.

Designing internationally forces you to ask: what's the minimum viable experience for this market? Many features that work in one place are irrelevant or harmful elsewhere.

Kaushik: When launching in a new country, what research and planning does Urban Company do?

Rohan: There's a standard playbook we use when evaluating and designing for a new country:

1. Competitive analysis: study local competitors and their products in detail.
2. On-ground research trip: send a small team to observe, interview customers, and meet partners.
3. Paid user research: recruit customers and compensate them for interviews and usability tests - don't rely on organic feedback alone.
4. Pilot / MVP: test an essential experience with a small cohort to validate hypotheses before building the full product.
5. Iterate with country teams: maintain continuous feedback loops with local ops teams to adopt new insights.

We focus on defining clear "jobs-to-be-done" and the bare minimum features required to test the hypothesis. If pilot metrics look promising, we invest in scaling the product for the market. The combination of qualitative fieldwork and rapid pilots reduces the risk of building the wrong product.

Kaushik: How do you balance product-market fit with global consistency?

Rohan: There’s always tension between global platform efficiency and local relevance. My approach is:

• Design global primitives: build platform capabilities that are flexible (e.g., scheduling engine, payments, notifications)
• Localize flows: create market-specific features or flows that plug into global primitives (e.g., Sprout for automated recurring services in Dubai)
• Keep UX consistent where it matters: booking flow patterns should be predictable so customers who know Urban Company feel at home, but allow surface differences to match local expectations

Essentially, separate the "what" (core customer needs) from the "how" (local execution). The "what" should be consistent; the "how" should be sensitive to cultural nuance and market constraints.

Rapid-fire Questions (as asked at the end of the interview)

Kaushik: One community you really like?

Rohan: Product School. It's a helpful resource for product thinkers and managers.

Kaushik: One designer who inspires you?

Rohan: Vijay (a senior designer he worked with at Zomato) - admired for consistent excellence and craft.

Kaushik: One book every designer should read?

Rohan: Tragic Design - it reframes design's impact and responsibility. It forces you to think about the consequences when design fails and shows how design choices can have life-saving implications.

Kaushik: One piece of advice for someone starting to build a community?

Rohan: Be consistent and build for others, not yourself. Talk to lots of people first to understand the real problems, and then design the community around those shared needs. Don’t build in isolation - engage your audience early and continually.

Expanded Insights and Practical Checklists

How to start a design community - a practical checklist

If you want to start a community like Design Sundays, here's a condensed, practical checklist based on Rohan’s experience:

1. Define the community mission: what specific value do you create (learning, jobs, referrals)?
2. Start small and consistent: host weekly or monthly talks; pick a cadence you can sustain.
3. Engage experts early: invite one high-quality guest per session to build trust and credibility.
4. Collect feedback regularly: after every session, ask one focused question: "What one thing would make this session more valuable?"
5. Divide roles early: content, growth, operations, partnerships. Expect volunteer burnout if roles are unclear.
6. Budget for early investment: most communities need financial runway for tools, paid promotions, or speaker honorariums.
7. Measure outcomes: track active members, session attendance, cohort completion rates, and referred hires.
8. Iterate the product: move from free sessions to structured cohorts once you validate demand and delivery quality.

How to mentor design students effectively - practical tips

Mentoring is an art. Based on Rohan’s approach, here are tips mentors should use to help juniors:

• Diagnose first: don’t prescribe without understanding the learner’s background and exact pain points.
• Focus on outcomes: ask "What does success look like for you in 3 months?" and align the plan to that.
• Be specific in feedback: actionable changes (e.g., "show process steps in your case study" or "include user quotes in research") are more helpful than vague praise.
• Build confidence: assign small deliverables with quick wins to help learners build momentum.
• Use cohort learning: peers motivate each other and normalize career progress.

How to run product research when launching in a new country

Launch research should be a blend of desk work, fieldwork, and rapid prototyping. Here’s a step-by-step template:

1. Competitive desk research: map local players, pricing, and feature sets.
2. Field reconnaissance: send a small team for 1-2 weeks to observe local behavior and interview stakeholders.
3. Hypothesis mapping: write specific hypotheses you want to test (e.g., "Customers prefer scheduled weekly cleaners over ad-hoc bookings").
4. Recruit paid participants: run incentivized interviews and usability tests to avoid sampling bias.
5. Design an MVP pilot: prioritize features that validate the hypothesis with minimal engineering effort.
6. Measure leading indicators: retention, repeat bookings, NPS, partner satisfaction.
7. Iterate or pivot: use pilot data to decide whether to scale, iterate, or sunset the idea.

Case studies and examples from the conversation

Design Sundays cohort - the confidence multiplier

Example: A student in Rohan's Product Design Launchpad already had technical skills but lacked confidence. The cohort structure (weekly deliverables, peer feedback, mentorship sessions) created accountability. Within three weeks of finishing the course, she received multiple job offers. The difference was not skill alone but gaining the confidence to present work and interview effectively. This highlights a crucial point: mentorship should address both craft and soft skills, especially confidence and interview readiness.

Zomato restaurant menu tool - design under complexity

Example: Building a menu management tool at Zomato required mapping domain complexity (variants, combos, pricing rules) into a simple UI usable by non-technical restaurant owners. The product needed to be flexible-handle pizzas with toppings, sizes, and add-ons-but still accessible. The hard problems were not visual but structural: modeling domain logic, aligning stakeholders (sales, tech, operations), and running multiple iterations until the product felt usable in the wild.

Urban Company Sprout - recurring services for Dubai

Example: Sprout was a product for Dubai where recurring service schedules, automatic payments, and local labor market constraints demanded a different UX than India. The product simplified rebooking, reduced friction for customers who didn't want to re-create orders weekly, and addressed local hiring complexities. This shows how local constraints (cost of domestic help, visa rules, cultural cleanliness norms) can spawn entire product lines.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

Pitfall: Building without community input

Many community projects fail because founders build for what they think is needed rather than what members ask for. Rohan’s advice: talk to tons of members first. Use surveys, interviews, and small tests to validate whether the problem exists and whether people value your solution enough to participate or pay.

Pitfall: Trying every growth channel at once

Experimentation is essential, but spreading too thin is dangerous. Rohan suggests a focused split: keep core delivery consistent (80%) and reserve 20% for growth experiments. That focused approach preserves quality and allows you to systematically test new acquisition channels.

Pitfall: Not measuring community outcomes

Don't confuse activity with impact. Track outcome metrics (job placements, cohort completion, satisfaction, net promoters) rather than vanity metrics like follower count. The right metrics will guide product and curriculum changes.

How to get involved with Design Sundays

If you're a designer or an aspiring designer interested in Design Sundays, here's a practical plan for how to engage and get value:

1. Attend a live session and treat it as a mini-lesson - take notes, ask one question, and implement any single tip within a week.
2. Participate in a cohort to get structured practice and accountability.
3. Request a portfolio review with clear context: share your background, goals, and what specific help you want.
4. Volunteer to help run an event or moderate a session - this builds network equity and deepens learning.

FAQ

Q: I'm new to design. What should my first three months look like?

A: Month 1 - Basics: learn interaction design patterns, wireframing, and prototyping tools. Build 2-3 micro projects (e.g., redesign a checkout flow, or a local service booking). Month 2 - Process: document process (research -> ideation -> prototyping -> testing) and create one case study that shows thinking. Month 3 - Feedback & polish: join a cohort or mentorship to get structured feedback, iterate the case study to professional quality, and begin applying for internships or junior roles with 1-2 strong case studies.

Q: I want to start a community but don’t have time. What’s the minimum viable community?

A: Start with a weekly or biweekly meetup that you can run consistently for six months. Pick one format (e.g., 45-minute talk + 15-minute Q&A), invite one guest per session, and collect feedback. If you can’t run events, start a moderated chat channel (Discord/Slack) with clear topics and a weekly prompt. The minimal viable community is consistency, not scale.

Q: How do I prepare a portfolio that stands out?

A: Focus on story, not screenshots. A strong case study includes: context (problem statement and constraints), process (research, decisions, and iterations), outcome (metrics or user feedback), and learnings. Include artifacts that show depth - user interviews, journey maps, wireframes, and A/B test ideas. Finally, tailor your portfolio for the job you’re applying to: emphasize the parts of your process that match the role.

Q: How can small product teams handle stakeholder alignment?

A: Use clear artifacts: product briefs, one-page goals, and user research summaries. Schedule stakeholder reviews at fixed cadences and create shared success metrics. When tensions surface, tie decisions to data and the user's job-to-be-done. Early prototypes and pilot metrics reduce conflict because they provide evidence of what actually works.

Q: How do you test product-market fit in a new country without overspending?

A: Use an MVP pilot approach: define a clear hypothesis (what problem you solve), build the minimum feature set to test that hypothesis, recruit an initial user base through paid research incentives, and measure retention/usage for 30-90 days. If the pilot shows positive leading indicators (repeat usage, NPS), iterate and invest further. If the pilot fails, use learnings to pivot or stop.

Final thoughts and takeaways

Rohan's experience underscores a few universal truths for product designers and community builders:

• Communities multiply your learning and impact - but they require long-term consistency and people-first design.
• Mentorship must be diagnostic: identify the learner’s real problem before prescribing a solution.
• Design at scale (Zomato, Urban Company) means aligning cross-functional stakeholders and respecting local user behaviors when launching across markets.
• Research is non-negotiable when building for a new country: mix competitive analysis, fieldwork, and paid user interviews to validate hypotheses before full-scale investment.

Design Sundays provides a living example of a community that began as a mission to connect learners with mentors and has matured into a platform blending live content, cohort learning, and future product ambitions. Rohan’s pragmatic lessons make it clear: if you want to build something that survives and scales, anchor it in real user problems, stay consistent, and be willing to invest time and curiosity into every person who joins.

Credits: This article is based on the interview "Building Design Communities - Rohan from Urban Company" by Product Stories (host: Kaushik Mali). The full conversation provides richer nuance and is recommended for anyone building communities or launching products in diverse markets.

Related action items

• If you’re starting a community: draft a three-month content calendar with specific guest topics and an experiment plan for growth.
• If you’re mentoring: create an intake template to capture background, goals, and pain points before each mentorship call.
• If you’re shipping internationally: plan a two-week research trip, a five-hypothesis document, and a lean MVP plan with measurable leading indicators.