e-commerce
Snapdeal names Harish Sivaramakrishnan as VP – design
MUMBAI: Snapdeal has appointed Harish Sivaramakrishnan as vice president-design. In his new role, Sivaramakrishnan will spearhead the design teams across the company’s portfolio of products and build a design studio across the Delhi and Bangalore offices.
This is an expansion of his current role at Freecharge, where he is currently heading the UX, Design and the front end engineering teams. Sivaramakrishnan will now play a key role in product design as Snapdeal turns its focus to building a technology platform with intuitive web and mobile interface.
Prior to Snapdeal, Sivaramakrishnan was with FreeCharge where he joined as head of design & UI engineering in 2013. Previously, he has also worked at Myntra as user experience architect.
Prior to joining Myntra, he spent a decade in Adobe in Bangalore and San Francisco working on a diverse set of products in engineering, product and design capacities.
Sivaramakrishnan said, “Snapdeal’s growth in the technology space has been unprecedented and it gives me great pleasure to be a part of this young and energetic team. Over the years I have been extremely passionate about building great consumer experiences in the Indian e-commerce space. I was fortunate to have gotten the opportunity to bootstrap the FreeCharge Design team and now look forward to building a uniform design sensibility across Snapdeal’s entire digital commerce ecosystem.”
Snapdeal chief product officer Anand Chandrasekaran added, “Great design is as much form as it is function. At Snapdeal, we strive to deliver the best buyer and seller experiences and are thrilled to make design an integral part of our approach to product development. In India design is yet to get its due recognition. We are extremely excited to have Harish onboard and wish him a great journey ahead with the Snapdeal family. Our consumers and sellers will be the beneficiaries of our endless debates as we endeavor to get to pixel perfection.”
e-commerce
Instamart and Duolingo launch street spell check campaign for Instaprint
Duo the owl fixes signboard typos across cities to showcase instant printing.
MUMBAI: If spelling mistakes had a sworn enemy, it might just be a bright green owl with a printer. Instamart has teamed up with language learning platform Duolingo for a quirky nationwide campaign that turns everyday spelling errors into a public spectacle while promoting its instant printing service, InstaPrint. The playful activation takes aim at the many misspelled shop boards and public signs scattered across Indian streets. From “saloons” that promise haircuts rather than drinks to menus and posters peppered with punctuation mishaps, the campaign sends Duolingo’s mascot Duo on a mission to restore linguistic order.
Armed with Instamart’s instant printing feature, Duo prints corrected versions of the mistakes on the spot and pastes them over the originals. The result is a series of humorous street interventions that have quickly begun circulating on social media.
Photos and videos of the grammar correcting owl have been widely shared online, with amused users reacting to the unexpected spell check patrol. One user joked, “Ab ayega na maza bhidu,” capturing the internet’s delight at the unusual campaign.
Behind the humour lies a practical message. The activation is designed to showcase the capabilities of Instaprint, Instamart’s printing service that allows users to print documents and posters almost instantly.
The company says the feature is meant for everyday needs such as printing resumes, visa documents or last minute posters without the usual scramble to locate a print shop.
Instamart introduced Instaprint in 2025 across select metropolitan cities including Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi. The service allows users to order printed materials directly through the platform, extending the quick commerce model beyond groceries and household essentials.
By combining Duolingo’s famously persistent owl with India’s street level spelling quirks, the campaign taps into the internet’s long running fascination with grammar mistakes while demonstrating a real world use case for instant printing.
After all, in a world full of typos, sometimes what you really need is a quick printer and a very determined language teacher.
