From fitness tech to emotionally intelligent smart homes, IIIT-H alumnus Aniket Chandekar blends design, technology, and storytelling to create products that put people first.

“I am passionate about digital products and their impact on our daily lives”, observes Aniket Chandekar, of the first batch of IIIT-H’s M. Tech program in Product Design and Management. The 2024 alumnus won laurels for the Institute at several international design competitions during his eventful two-year tenure.

Currently a senior UX Designer at Innova Solutions, it is sketching and comic books that fuel the creativity of the engineer-designer, whose strengths lie in interaction design and building innovative solutions that align user requirements with client objectives.

IIIT-H’s M.Tech PDM program
Valuable insights from internships during his undergrad days, with concert organizers Boost, Indian Oil Corporation, Indian Railways and gaming laptop maker MSI, would solidify Chandekar’s passion to pursue product design. “While looking for product design schools with human-computer interaction (HCI) centers, I came across the new PDM program at IIIT Hyderabad’s SERC, that accepted CEED scores” notes Chandekar, a B.Tech in electronics engineering from SRM University, Chennai (2015 – 2019), who did a short stint as system engineer at TCS. With a natural flair for design, it was his side-hustle in graphic design, that steered his decision to specialize in HCI, that linked systems development with design.

The M.Tech program put together by Prof. Raghu Reddy, aims to build customer-aware technical managers; techie at core but with management know-how. While focusing on the entire software development lifecycle and agile process, it offers students the flexibility to choose their specialization, in business, tech or design. “Prof. Raman Saxena is heavily involved in design theory and UX aspect while Prof. Ramesh Loganathan, Prof. Prakash Yalla and Prof. Karthik Vaidyanathan take care of technology-product-entrepreneurship at Product labs.

Prototype development spans the second year, where the student takes a product idea from zero to one and pitches it to an external jury.  The uniqueness lies in the flexibility it offers for working professionals, some with 20 plus years of corporate experience, who are now part of the program. “Most of our first batch of fourteen were full-time students who lived on campus and received a monthly stipend, with campus placements at the end of the two-year program”, informs Chandekar who worked as TA under Dr. Nimmi Rangaswamy and Prof. Raman Saxena and interned at Validus.

“For my masters’ project Fytt.io, a fitness data sharing system, my guide Prof. Ravi Warrier, and I identified and addressed some pain points of fitness enthusiasts. For instance, to share daily inputs with their life coach, they end up maintaining excel sheets; an inherently inconsistent and possibly flawed system. Our idea was to make the journey a little more fun, with an electronic device strapped on, to capture data of steps completed, monitor health parameters etc that is automatically updated to the trainer” 

Competitions, Awards and the games people play
“IIIT-H hosts a lot of hackathons for students. Coming from a very non-coding background, I focused more on design competitions”, says Chandekar who won a slew of Design Awards including Silver at the London Design Awards during his IIIT-H days.

“Bluebird, our project that won the Service design network, Service design challenge and London Design Awards, concentrated on palliative care for cancer and neurological disease, aiming to connect communities through mobile application in Tier 2 and 3 cities. For end of life care, the application helped to build care circles of loved ones, medical stakeholders and an emotional support network of patients undergoing similar situations.

Lucid was IIIT-H’s student entry (with Anuj Malviya, Shambhavi Ojha, Vinaya Gopi, Venkat Sai ) for Salesforce Design-a-thon where a sustainable solution for rural India’s plastic burning was presented, adhering to UN-defined sustainable development goals. It was a circular economy model using a network of Kabadiwalas and local shopkeepers for upcycling waste. “We entered Lucid for D’Source DIC Design Innovation Center-BHU SDG Challenge 2023, and Interaction Design hosted by IIT Bombay. Our IIIT-H team were runner-up in the Autodesk Instructables Arcade Student Design Challenge 2024 “, says the go-getter who featured on the Dean’s List (2022-2023).

“For upskilling professional women rejoining the workforce after maternity leave, Rachanarth, our entry to YUJ Design, used generative AI to collate resources from online platforms (like YouTube, Coursera, Swayam, blogs) to create a personalized customer pathway. Tinder happenings, our PM Study developed KPIs and metrics to match individual persons and groups with a desired concert or cause”. For Prof. Kavita Vemuri’s module on game design and development, Chandekar’s team developed Return of Vritra, with story characters inspired by Indian mythology. 

Giving a glimpse into his working style, he says, “to zero in on fresh ideas for hackathons, we concentrate on niche areas. For a trusted repository on apps from the design perspective, we generally go to Be Hands, an Adobe site or check out IEEE or ACM publications”.

A brave new world
Straight out of IIIT Hyderabad, Chandekar joined Dataflare, a small startup as product manager and soon pivoted into proper UX design at Innova Solution. “Concurrently, I enrolled as research intern for a six-month program in University of South Australia’s, Australian Research Centre for Interactive and Virtual Environments to understand user experience in AR/ VR”, comments the design aficionado from Delhi who completed his schooling from the local Cambridge School, Raghupuram and ASN Senior Secondary School near Akshardham. 

Recently, Chandekar returned from a visit to the Google Mountain View office in California! His award-winning idea to build a mental health journal that would coordinate with smart home devices to create a desirable ambience, won him the Google Home Developer AI Challenge 2025. He explains. “On your way home from work, if you instruct your home smart speaker that you are “feeling stressed”, home devices will pick up these inferences and map devices in your network to make you feel relaxed, as per prior listed details; such as dimming the lights, phoning a loved one or turning on the coffee maker”.

Designing dreams under the shade of the Banyan
“Joining IIIT Hyderabad was a dream come true for me, obviously because it is one of the most coveted institutions in this country”, says the researcher. Because IIIT-H attracts the best students, there is an innate passion about creating new things and a research culture where any student can do something very interesting in their particular domain. “Walking on campus, you overhear people discussing an interesting research paper or some breakthrough!  Coming from a non- coding background, I had to push myself. The whole ecosystem pushes you out of your comfort zone which is very important. Since the environment is very hyper-focused on outcomes, that really built my mindset to learn more and try new things”, notes Chandekar who enjoyed the late-night walks on campus, when everything is quiet.

“I loved the canteens, especially the North Mess”, he reminisces. “I have great memories of badminton in the park. Chatting with batch mates who were working professionals with over 15 years of experience, learning about industry best practices and the ground realities, gave us a pretty holistic view. Building informal connections with someone so senior, taking part in competitions, attending conferences around the year and meeting people from all over the world were some wonderful highlights of my time at IIIT-H. The year-long project gives you the opportunity to work with CIE and get a close up view of how the startup culture works.  IIIT-H also provides different programs and incubation support to build your own start-up company”.

That which drives the designer
“I love dabbling in game-development’, observes Chandekar whose interest in medieval fantasy like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter became excellent content for the games he developed.  Initially he aspired to become a story writer and an artist, that slowly segued into an interest in electronics and robotics and finally landed on design that combined his love of art and tech.

“If it’s trending I watch it”, smiles the gamer who loves hiking and running. “I like to travel, enjoy anime and my present reading is biased towards non-fiction. I love movies from different cultures, especially eastern European and Japanese. I like to dabble in a lot of things. The idea is to learn as much as I can about the world. Once I am done with R&D, I take up validating and using it.  There is no particular well-defined career path that I have in mind. I just go with the flow. If it seems interesting, I push myself to participate in competitions which I have no idea about.  I push myself for a week to see if my skills in design will give that edge in the competition. Design is at the core of all that I do”.