Figma’s Bengaluru debut signals India’s rise as a global design hub

Figma has officially opened its first India office in Bengaluru, marking a major step in its global expansion and deepening ties with one of its fastest-growing design communities. India is now Figma’s second-largest active user market, with customers across 85% of the country’s states and Union Territories.

“Today India is our second-largest active user market. As it evolves into a global software and manufacturing hub, the value of design will only grow,” said Scott Pugh, Vice President of Sales, APAC, Figma. “We’ve seen increasing demand from Indian companies, and with the office opening, we want to get closer to our users and the community here.”

Figma’s user base in India includes Airtel, CARS24, Groww, Juspay, Myntra, Swiggy, TCS and Zomato, with over 40% of BSE-100 companies now using its platform. Nearly 7,000 people registered for the launch event, while the Friends of Figma community counts 25,000 members across Indian cities.

India’s design DNA and AI moment

At a media interaction in Bengaluru, Abhishek Mathur, Vice President of Engineering at Figma, reflected on his week meeting local designers and developers. “There’s something uniquely Indian about how teams design,” he said. “They combine deep customer empathy with community spirit and a fearless embrace of AI.”

Mathur illustrated this with examples from devotional platforms that design for faith-led experiences to mobility apps that use colour cues for riders who may not read text easily. “In a world where anyone can build software, design becomes the differentiator. Good is no longer good enough, good is the new mediocre,” he said.

AI at the heart of design

The company showcased its expanding suite of AI-powered design tools, including Figma Make, which turns prompts or designs into functional prototypes, and Figma Draw, which brings advanced illustration and image creation to designers. Figma Sites now allows teams to design and publish full-fledged websites directly from the platform.

Figma also announced the acquisition of Weavy, a generative AI platform that enhances collaborative workflows by integrating the best models for specific design tasks. “AI is lowering the barrier for everyone to create while raising the ceiling of what’s possible,” Mathur noted.

According to Figma’s research with YouGov, 93% of designers in India already use AI in design, and 81% of developers believe design is critical to the success of AI-driven products.

Enterprises designing for scale

Indian enterprises are already showing how design-led innovation scales with Figma. “At Myntra, design is at the heart of everything we do,” said Lakshminarayan Swaminathan, Vice President of Product Management and Design. “Figma unites our teams around a shared creative vision, accelerates idea-to-product, and keeps us ahead of evolving digital experiences.”

Akshit Malhotra, Head of Design at CARS24, spoke about eliminating fragmentation across markets. “Product, marketing and brand experiences often felt disjointed,” he said. “Using Figma, we built a unified design system that aligns marketing and product. Now every customer touchpoint feels cohesive and connected as we unified design across India, Australia and the UAE.”

Building a design-led ecosystem

Figma’s evolution from a design tool to a connected, AI-powered product platform mirrors the changing face of software creation. From FigJam for brainstorming to Figma Buzz for brand asset production, the company now supports the entire product lifecycle from ideation to code.

“Design is everyone’s business,” Mathur concluded. “Our goal is to empower teams, designers, developers and product managers to move faster, think creatively and build better together.”