Life is a shipwreck, but don’t forget to sing in the lifeboats - Voltaire
Aangan
Aangan, my curated artisanal atelier, was born of a longing.
Every time I travelled abroad, I flinched at how India was represented — loud, ornamental, reduced to cliché. It felt like a dishonour to her, for my country is a land with the highest number of craft traditions in the world, from cashmere as light as mist on a kashmiri meadow, to the stories in Bengal’s Kantha, to Dokra jewellery forged in fire and wax to Lucknowi Chikankari that is as fine as breath on muslin.
Aangan was created to honour that depth, with restraint. All pieces are produced in small batches, never in factories, and sourced directly from artisans.
Aangan brings together my love for curation, photography, styling, and shooting luxury. And through it, I aim to give artisans their due and honour Indian craft for the treasure trove it truly is.
Kalote Animal Trust
In early 2017, I began working closely with the Kalote Animal Trust, helping shape communication and fundraising during its earliest years. I played a small but meaningful role in helping the organisation move from intent to infrastructure — work that pulled at both heartstrings and purse strings, and remains some of the work I’m most proud of.
Since then, I’ve found myself repeatedly stepping into a similar gap. I often work as a conduit between companies with CSR budgets and animal welfare organisations doing critical work on the ground but struggling with sustained funding. More recently, this has expanded into a broader project — looking at the growing number of people in cities who want the companionship of pets but don’t yet have the life structure or support to adopt, and the animals in shelters waiting for homes. My focus is on connecting these worlds more realistically and responsibly, because when funding is sustained and adoption is better supported, the result is simple and tangible: fewer animals in shelters, fuller homes, and more lives quietly changed.
Starmate
Starmate was born out of a moment when outrage was no longer enough. The brutality of the Nirbhaya incident shook me deeply — not just as a woman, but as a creative. I didn’t want to stop at anger. I wanted to build something that could actually help.
Starmate is a product I co-designed in collaboration with Future Wave Technologies. It is a discreet ring, designed to be worn on the finger, with an embedded button that can be pressed in danger to share your live location with five trusted contacts and begin recording and relaying ambient sound.
India has repeatedly been described as among the most unsafe countries for women. Starmate was my attempt to respond with design, technology, and intent — not just outrage.The product went on to win Gold at the World Innovation Cup, selected from over 700 global entries, in the Design & Lifestyle category.
