Design brought Rohit Jesudian from Dubai and Mumbai to Indy

Originally published via TechPoint – May 8, 2017: My name is Rohit Jesudian and I hail from Bombay (Mumbai) — a thriving metropolis that finds itself at the heart of business, tech and entertainment in India. I spent the first 12 years of my life, living in Dubai, another hub for growth and development in the Middle East. My earliest memories of this oasis were of a city coming to life as awe-inspiring architecture and monuments took shape around me. It inspired a yearning inside me to create something that would outlast my mortal being.

I initially looked to building structures and machines as a career and explored a degree in Mechanical Engineering; however, I found that my interests lay in less tactile creations. This pushed me to lean towards design, and while Australia, New Zealand and the UK were comparative avenues, family interests focused my decision to come to America. So with my guitar, a duffel bag filled with all my earthly possessions, flip-flops, a t-shirt and a pair of three-fourths pants, I unwittingly decided to brave the harshness of a February Indiana winter. I had never seen snow before, except for in the movies, so thus began my initiation to true culture-shock.

I completed my formal degree in Graphic Design from Taylor University, where I met my beautiful wife Andrea, a Venezuelan environmental scientist, and we were immediately faced with a new harsh reality that all international students have to face; find a company that will hire you, sponsor your work visa (with a 27% chance of you even getting one), and then prove that you can perform the job better than an American citizen applying for it.

As we pondered our situation and decision of picking a place to call home, a number of factors, such as weather and cost of living, weighed heavily on our minds. In the end, the atmosphere and safety of the greater Indianapolis metro area and nature of people that we met cemented our decision to choose Fishers as a place to start and raise our family. With both of our families in other countries and on either coasts, we were able to build an amazing community of friends around us.

One factor continued to haunt me as I was unsure if personal growth in my field would be stifled by not living in a prototypical tech city like San Francisco, New York, Austin or Seattle. I found, however, that the growing tech scene in Central Indiana has challenged me exponentially.

I have always looked at design as a mindset that each person in a company needs to hold, as opposed to a role that a group of individuals play. The UX designer needs to treat design as a business and not as an art. We need to build highly functional interfaces that meet the needs of the business, but the one thing that separates a designer from the rest of the business, is our spirit of empathy and curiosity.

In dealing with design decisions, I choose to focus on the problem, the solution and the person, because behind everything we do lies an individual whose life is changed by our decisions and, however small or big that change is, our spirit of empathy must speak out for them. I am extremely fortunate to work in a company where everyone, especially our CEO, Eric, sees the value in good design and constantly demands it.

I worked for two universities (IUPUI and Indiana Wesleyan University) and a tech company in Noblesville (Imavex) before joining Zylo. I decided to push myself further outside my comfort zone and reached out to designers in the Indy area and attended every tech/design event that I could. For a few months, I even drove two hours every Wednesday after work — while I was working in Marion, Ind. — to referee a kickball event in Indy that was sponsored by the AIGA (the professional association for design) so that I could rub shoulders and build relationships with designers in the heart of Indy. This and a few other events led me to my current role as the UX Designer for Zylo, a High Alpha portfolio company. I took this role, turning away opportunities that would have possibly led me to some amazing companies in the tech industry, but the opportunity was too huge to pass on.

Zylo is a statup blazing a path forward to assist our clients in gaining clarity around their software-as-a-service cloud application spend and utilization. Being the industry trailblazer is always filled with excitement, but it also means that we need to fail fast, learn fast and grow fast. We do this on a daily basis and that is where we leverage the power of design.

With design you have the ability to visualize your failures in a controlled environment without it affecting your business or your client-facing platforms. I am also surrounded by an amazing engineering team that pushes me and takes my vision even further, which ends with us having an amazing product and experience for our customers.

All of the above leads me to my current state of being. I now sit in one of the fastest growing tech companies in Indianapolis, working alongside some of the brightest minds in the industry, being mentored weekly by some of the titans of the Indianapolis tech scene. It’s a space that I am extremely humbled to hold and to which I’m excited to contribute.

Want to join the Zylo Team with me? Check out our open jobs today.