Design Leadership driven by Business Strategy.

I moved from product management into design over a decade ago, driven by a desire to be closer to where the systems fail real people. Since then, I've used design not just to improve products, but to originate and scale new ones — typically taking on leadership roles where design needed to be established and grown as a strategic function.

At Jiva (an Olam venture), I built the design team to 30+ across Singapore, India, and Indonesia. Our work supported a $100M+ ARR business and reached over 200,000 smallholder farmers.

At Agency (ex-IDEO), I co-led Singapore's national redesign of diabetes care, spanning community, clinic, hospital, and insurance systems. Before that, I led a business turnaround at Buuuk — doubling revenue, expanding the team, and launching high-impact products like Daimler's regional sales platform and NEA's crisis apps (serving 1M+ daily users).

Nav Pawera speaking at DesignUp 2022
Nav Pawera speaking at DesignUp 2022

I've built design teams across Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, India and Philipines. These teams have helped bring to life services in agriculture, healthcare, public infrastructure, and finance.

I have been speaking regularly at events around the world for the past 20 years, you'll find a selection of my talks and appearances on this site.

Recent
Highlights

Head of Design at Jiva (OLAM)

Joining as one of the early members of the leadership team, I set up the design & research org from scratch to 30+ members across India, Indonesia, Singapore.

  • Drove design strategy contributing to $100M+ ARR growth and over 800 employees.
  • Successfully co-managed $5M+ annual Product-Design-Tech budget (140-person division).
  • Spearheaded design initiatives impacting 200k+ farmers, boosting their earnings ~25%.
  • Shaped company strategy through defining and leading critical new product/service lines.
Jiva team at Bali offsite

Design Team Offsite in Bali (2023)

Jiva team kickoff in Goa

Design Team offsite in Goa (2022)

Team dinner in Jakarta

Team dinner in Jakarta (2022)

Team dinner in Bangalore

Team dinner in Bangalore (2022)

Senior Design Lead at Agency (ex IDEO)

I joined the ex-IDEO team in Singapore to lead multi-disciplinary projects. Most of my time was spent working with Temasek Holdings to define the future of Diabetes healthcare for Singapore — from the community, to clinics to hospital care.

  • Led a multi-disciplinary team (5 designers, 5 experts) on year-long strategic project designing diabetes care solutions (Singapore Govt/Temasek).
  • The project influenced acquisition of a clinic chain for service model prototyping (Launched as "Ripple" 2022).
  • Provided guidance for service standard design (Singapore Power) & curriculum development (LKY School).
Agency project team

Synthesizing research

Agency workshop session

Workshopping spaces

Project board discussion

Project sharebacks

Project presentation

Interviewing stakeholders

Director at Buuuk

Three years after first joining Buuuk, I took over the studio to help grow it further. Along with doing some amazing work, I transformed Buuuk from a dev house to a design-led studio, making design the primary revenue driver.

  • Achieved business turnaround, doubling revenue to SGD 3M+ ARR in 3 years.
  • Expanded the studio team threefold and established Vietnam office for scaling & efficiency.

Notable projects:

  • Daimler: Sales platform for 5k+ personnel across Asia.
  • NEA: Apps serving 1M+ monthly users (handled 1M+ sessions/24h in crisis); featured in '50 Years of Design in Singapore'.
  • Apple: Award-winning app used for Apple Watch launch (SG).
Buuuk 10 Year Anniversary celebration

Buuuk's 10 Year Anniversary celebration

Speaking at BXD Event

Speaking at the "Business × Design" event

SPH Workshop session

Workshop with SPH stakeholders

Buuuk team dinner

Team dinner after successfully launching Klok

Work
History

  • Jiva — Singapore

    Head of Design — May 2021 to Apr 2025

  • Agency (ex IDEO) — Singapore

    Senior Design Lead — Aug 2019 to Jan 2020

  • Buuuk — Singapore

    Director (Design) — May 2016 to Jul 2019

    Head of Design — Jan 2013 to May 2016

  • Bubble Motion — Singapore

    Director, Product Management — Sep 2012 to Dec 2013

    Sr Product Manager — May 2011 to Sep 2012

  • Buuuk — Singapore

    Sr Product Manager — Oct 2010 to Apr 2011

  • Opera Software — Norway

    Product Manager — Aug 2007 to Apr 2010

    Web Evangelist — Jun 2006 to Aug 2008

  • CueBlocks — India

    Web Designer & Developer — Jun 2005 to Apr 2006

Beyond
Work

Speaking at universities and events across the globe for over a decade on topics covering Usability, Research, Prototyping, Inspiration & Collaboration Across Teams:

  • Over 70 conferences and events in Singapore, UK, Germany, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Brazil, Vietnam and India.
  • Lectures and Workshops at universities across Norway, Sweden, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Singapore & India.

Education

  • Punjab Technical University — India

    Bachelor in Technology of Computer Sciences — June 2005