Think Design, the UI/UX and experience design agency under Havas India, has partnered with Grihum Housing Finance Limited to design and deliver ‘Ekhum’, a unified digital platform that integrates the company’s entire lending lifecycle. The platform spans loan origination, credit appraisal, collections, HR operations and customer self-service, signalling a shift towards experience-first digital transformation in the housing finance sector.
Positioned as a design-led intervention in a category traditionally driven by legacy systems and fragmented workflows, Ekhum places user experience at the centre of its architecture. Rather than treating design as a layer applied post-development, the platform was conceptualised with experience design as a foundational principle, aligning business objectives with user needs across functions.
Varun Guliani, chief information officer, Grihum Housing Finance, said, "The success of Ekhum would not have been possible without Think Design. They don't start with screens; they start with understanding the business. Before a single interface was designed, they had deeply understood our domain, our verticals, and the real working conditions of our users. That foundation meant development was largely first-time right, a rare achievement in large-scale digital transformation."
The platform has delivered measurable operational efficiencies, reducing fresh loan login time to 40 minutes compared to the industry norm of a day or more. It enables a fully paperless onboarding experience through Aadhaar-based authentication and integrates automated bank statement analysis via account aggregator systems. Initially conceived as a loan origination platform, Ekhum has since expanded into a comprehensive enterprise solution covering partner onboarding, employee management, and customer-facing self-service capabilities.
Deepali Saini, ceo, Think Design and global chief experience design officer at Havas CX, said, "With Ekhum, we were designing at the intersection of financial inclusion and enterprise transformation. Through first principles thinking, we delivered outcomes that redefine what a modern housing finance enterprise can be and raise the bar for what the industry should expect from a design-integrated digital transformation."
The project required translating complex financial workflows into intuitive and assistive user journeys. Prakhar Srivastava, project lead, Think Design, said, "This was one of the most layered design engagements we have worked on, not just in scope, but in the depth of domain understanding required. Translating genuinely complex financial workflows into experiences that feel assistive and intuitive demanded a very different kind of design thinking."
Grihum operates across 209 branches in 18 states, serving a diverse user base that includes field relationship managers, credit analysts, operations teams and first-time home loan customers. The scale and diversity of these stakeholders informed the platform’s design approach. A mobile-first framework was adopted for field teams, while web interfaces were optimised for credit and operational functions, ensuring contextual relevance across use cases.
The engagement reflects a broader shift in enterprise transformation, where design agencies are increasingly shaping not just interfaces but end-to-end business systems. Think Design’s approach involved extensive domain immersion, lifecycle mapping and field research, enabling the creation of an information architecture that supports multiple user journeys without compromising usability.
Backed by TPG Group, Grihum continues to focus on affordable housing finance across semi-urban and peri-urban markets. The Ekhum platform aligns with this mission by improving accessibility, transparency and efficiency, while also strengthening internal processes through a unified digital ecosystem.
