Designed a bilingual finance app for India’s gig workers — boosting task completion by 42%
See how we transformed lives through design! This case study shows how our bilingual fintech solution empowered gig workers and revolutionized financial inclusion.
Vahan is a YC-backed startup that helps gig and blue-collar workers in India manage their finances through technology. Their flagship app, Mitra (meaning "friend" in Hindi), aims to make financial services simple, visual, and accessible for first-time smartphone users in India’s growing digital economy.
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
- Steve Jobs
Challenge
Designing the Mitra app meant solving for a unique audience—workers who often face barriers like low literacy, limited digital exposure, older devices, and patchy internet. Our goal was to build an experience that made financial tools feel approachable and useful to this group. Key challenges included minimizing text, simplifying navigation, supporting two languages, and building trust from the first interaction—all within a low-bandwidth, low-hardware environment.
Approach
We adopted a visual-first design strategy, using large icons, color cues, and simple layouts to guide users through key tasks. Hindi and English language support was integrated to ensure broader accessibility, with special care taken to maintain legibility and clarity in both scripts. Every screen was kept focused on a single action to reduce confusion and cognitive load. Performance was optimized for entry-level smartphones and low-connectivity zones, ensuring the app felt light and responsive. User feedback was gathered throughout, helping us iterate toward a product that felt intuitive and reliable in real-life scenarios.
Key Findings
Insights gathered from extensive usability testing and A/B validation:
Simplified task flows and reduced errors resulted
25%
improved task completion rate
Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent.
- Joe Sparano
