Hello, I'm Alpika

I've joined the Excel team at the Hyderabad campus. I moved here from Bangalore. Before that I spent ten years in Gurgaon, and I'm originally from Lucknow.

What I've been up to

Shopdeck

For the past year I was managing design at Shopdeck, a commerce platform that helps small and medium businesses run their own D2C brands. I led design across the merchant-facing products and the internal systems that keep the business running smoothly as it scales.

A lot of my work was around automation of processes across seller onboarding, website creation, marketing, and support, cutting manual effort so the company could grow without piling on operational overhead.

We also did one major design-driven project to bring an NPS lift, an AI-powered platform that generates brand-aligned storefronts automatically. Every store is assembled from a shared codebase and a common kit of design building blocks, so each merchant gets a distinct identity without anyone hand-building hundreds of custom themes.

Zupee

Before Shopdeck I was at Zupee, a real-money gaming app, where I led design for the consumer app and got to build it from the ground up. My team and I worked on features for user retention, optimising new-user onboarding journeys, and streamlining payment experiences and customer support.

Airtel Blinkit Milkbasket Roundglass

Earlier than that: Airtel, Blinkit, Milkbasket, and Roundglass. Almost all of my work has been in startups, both early stage and growth.

BIT Mesra NID Ahmedabad

I studied at BIT Mesra, then NID Ahmedabad.

Art, Design and Pop Culture

I love the art of Polish film posters and Soviet-era propaganda posters.

Polish poster — E.T. (Jakub Erol)
Polish poster — Willow (Wiesław Wałkuski)
Soviet poster — The Motherland Calls
Soviet poster — Literacy is the path to communism

Hard to narrow down - but if I had to pick two favourite artists, it'd be Diego Rivera and Gustav Klimt.

Diego Rivera — Flower Seller
Diego Rivera — The Flower Vendor
Gustav Klimt — The Kiss
Gustav Klimt — Mäda Primavesi
Flaming June by Frederic Leighton

My absolute favourite is Flaming June by Frederic Leighton.

Favourite films

Beginners
Beginners
Big Fish
Big Fish
The Darjeeling Limited
The Darjeeling Limited
Kiki's Delivery Service
Kiki's Delivery Service
White Chicks
White Chicks
Chungking Express
Chungking Express

Books

I can't say I've read a lot, but I do love a good graphic novel. These are a few I've read that I still think about.

Blacksad
Dracula
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Persepolis

On my playlist right now

Lalom

Jungle

Daft Punk

Sting

Watching right now

30 Rock
Pantheon
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

I've been really behind on picking up any good hobbies. I used to do ink and watercolour drawings… but now I just watch new movie trailers on YouTube. 🫠