Heershil Parmar
UX and Product Design Leader
The Person
behind the work
I'm a product design leader with 14 years of experience building systems where design decisions have real consequences, financial, regulatory, and human.
"I don't make things look good. I make complex things legible."
I've led design at Kotak Securities across ₹500Cr+ daily transaction volume, built AR commerce for Reliance Jio at 400M user scale, and founded an immersive design practice from nothing.
What makes me different from most design leaders: I used AI to validate IA decisions before the first wireframe was built. I fed 50K+ behavioural sessions into AI models to surface patterns that no user interview would have found. The decisions that came out of that process outperformed our assumptions in every metric that mattered.
I measure design success in activation rates, rejection rates, and revenue impact not in how polished the interface looks.
Belief 01 — Worldview
Your entire life is UX.
Every queue, form, and conversation is designed. Most of it poorly. I apply this lens beyond the screen — to the policy, the process, the org behind it.
Belief 02 — Principle
Design earns its seat through outcomes.
Craft in service of beauty is decoration. Craft that reduces risk, lifts conversion, and builds faster orgs — that's leadership.
Belief 03 — AI
AI should validate decisions, not generate them.
I use AI as a pre-build intelligence layer — to test hypotheses against behavioral data before committing design resources. Not as a shortcut. As an epistemology.
Belief 04 — Leadership
The best systems outlast their designers.
A quality bar that requires me to enforce it isn't a quality bar. I build frameworks that hold without me in the room.
Beyond the job
A UX leader from IIM Kozhikode, based in Mumbai, is known for blending clarity, systems thinking, and behaviour-driven design with every product he touches.
He currently serves as the AVP of Product Design at Kotak Securities, where he leads experience design for the Neo app and drives scalable systems across teams. Outside of work, he has mentored more than 200 aspiring designers, conducted workshops, and helped shape young UX talent through practical, grounded teaching.
A defining moment early in his journey came when his CEO unexpectedly asked him to pitch a major design presentation to the ITC team, a role meant for someone else. He delivered under pressure, the team won the project, and his CEO later told him, “I knew you would be able to do it.” That moment shaped his confidence and his approach to leadership.
Heershil was born on 19th May 1991 in Mumbai, Maharashtra, to a Gujarati father, Jagdish Parmar, and a Gujarati mother, Sejal Parmar. He also has a younger sister, Palak Parmar, who is a psychologist. He is married to Hetal Parmar, a businesswoman who specialises in premium handcrafted home decor items.
Heershil studied at Holy Cross High School, then attended Mithibai College, where he developed an interest in psychology. Later, he went to IIM Kozhikode, where he combined his interests in psychology, UX design, and AI, leading to the development of a structured design mindset. Outside work, he also enjoys long rides on his Royal Enfield Himalayan, often using the open road as his quiet space to think and reset.