How Figma helps Groww simplify investing for its users

Putting user experience at the core of its design strategy, Groww has quickly become one of India’s leading financial services platforms and the nation’s biggest stockbroker. Today, more than 40 million customers use its easy, fast, and transparent transactions.

As it scaled up, cross-collaboration became more challenging for Groww’s designers—the design team has tripled in size since the company was founded in 2017.

Initially, it had a patchy process of exporting and sharing files using third-party tools. Collaboration was hard for the expanding team because work was locked up in people’s individual copies of the files.

All that changed when Figma was introduced at Groww in 2020. Brainstorming, designing, and cross-collaboration became a breeze. And that’s been a productivity game-changer for the design team.

Since then, Figma has been helping Groww simplify finance by making investing accessible to all its users.

Figma’s role in Groww’s growth

Groww’s design team is composed of more than 20 designers split across various project ‘pods’ within the company.

As Design Systems Lead, Sanket Chaudhari shapes and maintains Groww’s design infrastructure. When he joined in 2022, the company began tapping into Figma’s features to help the company scale and give its customers a better experience

“Figma helps us democratise access to the company’s design, and that’s what made it our go-to platform,” says Chaudari. “It‘s an open tool that’s de-siloed our organisation and allowed us to share files with developers and product managers without needing much work on licensing,” he says.

With Figma, Groww’s design teams can collaborate with other departments easily. Adit Gupta, Senior Director of Product Design at Groww, says, “Design is the core of everything we do. Simplifying user experience is our main value proposition in the financial industry. So now, the question is, ‘How can it be elevated for the users?’”

With that in mind, Groww started creating an interface that clients can easily navigate, setting it apart from the clunky applications traditionally offered by India’s banks.

That well-designed interface has done its job. Groww has acquired a highly engaged customer base that checks its app daily, if not more.

“User experience is one of Groww’s strong suits. If you look at our reviews, ratings, or customer feedback, it’s one of the main reasons why people use Groww and how clients came to trust us and our app,” Gupta says.

The collaborative power of Figma

Groww also needed to make sure it maintained the quality of its services as it expanded to new markets and its products got more complex.

“We’re known as this very simplified financial experience for customers. As we add services to build one product for all finances, it naturally becomes more complex,” says Gupta.

To take away that complexity for the user and keep things simple, different parts of Groww have had to work together to make sure that the interface stays easy to use and doesn’t become fragmented.

Chaudhari says Groww switched to Figma because it promised collaboration that made working together like this easier. It’s much less stressful when everybody can look into a single file rather than keep multiple copies in sync, he says.

And designers can work together in real-time. “We can just follow the presenter’s cursor. Anyone can tell their concerns regarding the flow in real-time,” he says.

Figma keeps Groww’s progress synced, unified, and consistent, saving a lot of time and keeping everything moving in the right direction.

“It’s much easier to talk about design while doing the work instead of shuffling through files and exporting our designs into some other third-party tool,” Chaudhari says. “Now, I can’t imagine life without Figma.”

More than just a designer’s productivity tool

Figma’s FigJam, a virtual whiteboard where everyone can pitch ideas and collaborate, is Groww’s go-to brainstorming tool.

FigJam helps articulate Groww's vision, purpose, and principles during brainstorming sessions when the design team is figuring out questions like ‘What would a product feel like?’ and ‘What would a product do?’

“FigJam helps us translate our high-level visions into products that all stakeholders understand,” Gupta says.

One of the things FigJam does beautifully is allow teams to put all external resources in one place. “FigJam stores information in an enriched way that everyone loves,” he says.

Gupta naturally turns to Figjam for the design team’s brainstorming sessions. “We used Figjam to define and build a shared understanding of elegance for our team along with defining the steps on how to achieve it at Groww,” says Gupta.

Besides using it to keep the design team aligned on common goals, Groww also has found a way to use FigJam to improve its work culture.

Take, for example, Groww’s Culture Jam, an annual brainstorming and employee pulse check session for designers.

Culture Jam sessions start out by identifying themes around issues like deep work and feedback culture. After that, designers can freely answer questions related to each theme and suggest immediate and long-term solutions—all via FigJam.

Culture Jam sessions help Groww foster a positive and healthy work environment by recognising and addressing issues that designers raise. They also help the company create the “best design culture” that helps it retain top talent.

Groww can see where it’s missing the mark with designers and fix things as required. “FigJam was the only way we could’ve done it,” Chaudhari says. “When it comes to collaboration abilities, Figma is unparalleled.”

Cross-functional collaboration with Dev Mode

With Figma, Groww has started to democratise access to design thinking by empowering its employees to co-create and collaborate. And other departments at Groww are now seeing the value that Figma brings to the company.

Figma has helped build a bridge between designers and developers, for example, making it easier to work together to improve quality, address product development challenges, and operationalise design.

Figma empowers design teams to create comprehensive prototypes, enabling developers to fully grasp design concepts and bring the design team’s ideas to life. Teams can also link their design files easily, making giving and receiving feedback simpler.

The release of Figma’s Dev Mode—a feature that can speed up website creation and applications—has ushered in an era of enhanced transparency between designers and developers regarding the status of Groww’s design system components in code.

Before, there were communication gaps due to inconsistencies between design intentions and development execution. Now, Figma’s Dev Mode documentation sets clear expectations, aligning both teams’ efforts.

“With Dev Mode, Figma allows designers and developers to have a shared understanding. This ensures that nothing is lost in translation because whatever we plan should be converted to code,” Chaudhari says, saying he’s excited about integrating more Dev Mode features into Groww’s workflows over the next few months.

“Our team foresees a lot of potential benefits of Dev Mode when it comes to building and maintaining our design language in code.”

Groww’s bright future with Figma

Thanks to Figma, working together has never been easier for Groww’s project managers, designers, and developers.

“For Groww to become India’s most trusted finance brand, design is our core asset,” Gupta says. “And Figma is the backbone of how we think and operationalise that design.”

Figma put an end to working in silos. Now, exporting files, gathering everyone for a meeting, and receiving feedback can all happen in real-time or asynchronously.

Figma also helps Groww promote a work culture where people’s opinions are heard and considered.

“Design and user experience is everyone’s responsibility. By getting the product on FigJam, designers on Figma, and developers on Dev Mode, we have a single suite bringing us that sense of collective ownership,” says Chaudhari.