Reduced time-to-market by 30%, used across 25+ products
AXIS BANK
SUBZERO DESIGN SYSTEM
DESIGNOPS
Impact HIGHLIGHTS
Overview
Axis Bank is one of India’s largest and most trusted financial institutions, serving millions through a wide range of digital products, from retail banking apps to enterprise dashboards and investment platforms. Drawing from my love for structured systems and scalable thinking, I helped evolve Subzero into a full-fledged design system. I focused on reducing design debt, aligning designers and developers, creating responsive component guidelines, and setting up a governance model that brought 25+ products into sync.
My Role
Governance and adoption, scaling across breakpoints, UI pattern library development, migration of old products, design-dev sync
Timeline
2023-2024
Always a work in progress -
like any design system is!
Team
3 designers
8 developers
1 project manager
Introduction
Building is the first step. Scaling is where the real maturity begins
Scaling is about taking it from 1 to 10, where a design system stops being a collection of assets and starts becoming a shared language, a decision-making tool, and a backbone for consistent, scalable product development.
It meant building rules, not just components. Designing not just for today, but for every team that would use the system tomorrow. I focused on making Subzero a system that developers trusted, designers loved, and product teams could rely on across 25+ digital products.
Scaling
Defining component and scaling standards
Axis Mutual Fund, one of India’s largest Asset Management Companies (AMC) noticed that only 30% of their investor base was under 35 years (while the industry average was 50%). They recognized an opportunity to capture the attention of younger investors. This gap exists because, for young adults, investing isn’t about long-term plans – it’s about navigating the confusion of where to begin. Many aren’t aware of the power of compounding and it's relation with starting early, missing out on the exponential growth that can come with time. But what if investing, instead of confusing and overwhelming, felt as natural as saving money for a vacation?
Standardization
I turned inconsistent repetition into a pattern library
Being on the design system team gave me a bird’s-eye view of how different financial products were being built in the organization. I noticed that across credit, savings, investment and more, teams were repeatedly creating similar modular flows like KYC, MPIN setup, NPS, from scratch. This repetition often led to inconsistencies and friction, both for users and internal teams. I took the lead in identifying these recurring UI patterns, mapping them across products, and working closely with designers and developers to formalize them into a centralized system pattern library
Operations
Establishing a system of governance
Many design systems fail not because of poor design, but because of poor governance. People stop trusting or using the system if there’s no clear way to contribute, request, or evolve it. When I started scaling Subzero, there was no centralized way to:
Request new components
Give feedback on existing patterns
Ask questions or suggest improvements
Get guidance on DS adoption in their product
When you're scaling a design system like Subzero across 25+ digital products, governance isn’t a luxury but a necessity. Without it, every team starts doing their own version of “what looks right.” So I designed a simple but effective framework that gave Subzero structure, and gave teams confidence.
Migration
Tackling design debt at a very very large scale
Before our internal tech teams were fully in place, many of Axis Bank’s digital products were built and shipped through external vendors. While this allowed for faster initial rollout, it also led to a major side effect: fragmented design ecosystems. Even as we rolled out Subzero, many designers continued using legacy kits specific to their vendor team or past projects because migrating felt effort-intensive. That meant developers, too, were still building with outdated systems, perpetuating the design debt and delaying standardization. This was costly for the business. Teams were reinventing the wheel, wasting time rechecking decisions, and unknowingly drifting further from a cohesive experience.
Documentation
Website
subzero 2.0 website
Takeaways
Collaboration is key to make a robust, adoptable design system
1
A Design System is never ‘finished’
I presented to C-suite executives with limited design exposure, focusing on how design decisions drove business outcomes like user engagement and growth. I secured buy-in and influenced product direction through strategic design.
2
Building a system in silos is a myth
I gained a deep understanding of regulatory constraints by working with legal and compliance. I then collaborated with design and engineering to creatively work around these constraints without compromising usability. This taught me that constraints are not limiting, but rather provide opportunities for innovation.
3
Bringing all teams on the same page is a skill in itself
I now understand the critical importance of funnels and demographic-driven tracking to optimize business metrics through improved experience and strategy. I gained insights into how different segmented groups interact with the platform, allowing me to pinpoint drop off points, teaching me the importance of data-driven product optimization.