Most entrepreneurs avoid starting businesses during global pandemics because they have this crazy idea that economic uncertainty makes business success less likely. Shivendra Singh and Chandni Chadha did exactly the opposite, launching Rock Paper Scissors Studio from a shared workspace in Bangalore with a business model that deliberately targeted the design challenges other agencies treated like toxic waste: too difficult, too complex, too risky, and definitely too likely to cause headaches that no amount of coffee can fix.
Five years later, this contrarian approach has created a 22-member distributed team solving problems for Fortune 500 companies and fintech disruptors across four cities, proving that sometimes the best business strategy is to do exactly what everyone else thinks is stupid.
The timing seemed terrible by conventional wisdom that values predictability and safety over opportunity and adventure. Startup failure rates remained brutal - 75% of venture-backed startups fail according to current data, with design agencies facing even steeper odds in a market more oversaturated than the dating app industry.
The pandemic had eliminated travel budgets, disrupted client relationships that took years to build, and forced everyone to reimagine how creative collaboration works when people can't be in the same room without masks and social distancing protocols. But Singh and Chadha saw opportunity where others saw obstacles, probably because they're either very smart or slightly crazy, and possibly both.
"Crisis forces efficiency and creativity in ways that comfort never can," Singh reflects, sounding like a business philosophy professor who actually knows what he's talking about. "We had to solve problems better, faster, and cheaper than agencies with 10x our resources and established client relationships.
That constraint became our competitive advantage because we couldn't afford to waste time on things that don't actually matter, like office politics and inefficient processes that exist because that's how things have always been done."
Their distributed model proved prescient as remote work productivity research validates their early bet on location-independent operations. Studies show remote workers are 35-40% more productive than traditional office workers, with 40% fewer mistakes and 72 minutes saved daily from eliminated commutes that nobody misses.
Companies with flexible work arrangements are 21% more profitable than fully in-person operations according to recent productivity analysis that makes traditional office advocates question their life choices.
Rock Paper Scissors Studio built these advantages into their foundation rather than adapting to them later like everyone else who had to figure out remote work during lockdown panic.
The projects they chose reflect their values-driven approach to business development that prioritizes meaning over easy money, which sounds idealistic but actually creates better business outcomes. Instead of chasing every RFP that promises quick revenue, they built a portfolio around challenges that aligned with their mission to create positive social impact through design.
Their success with Finfinity demonstrates this approach perfectly: transforming a lending platform concept into a functional marketplace that achieved 10,000 monthly impressions, 80% returning customer rate, and 40% revenue increase - results that make both investors and users happy, which is harder to achieve than it sounds.
Rock Paper Scissors Studio's work with Turtlemint shows their ability to tackle industries known for making everything unnecessarily complicated. Insurance typically feels like trying to understand contracts written by lawyers who hate clarity, but they created user experiences that make sense to normal humans who just want protection without requiring law degrees or meditation practices to manage frustration levels.
The client feedback speaks volumes: "This design took everybody at our company by 1.5 to what degree of sophistication we could achieve when working with the right teams" - which translates from corporate speak to "holy cow, this actually works and makes us look competent."
Their approach to fintech design exemplifies their philosophy of tackling difficult challenges rather than avoiding them like most people avoid difficult conversations with relatives. India's fintech market is projected to reach $150 billion by 2025, growing at 31% annually according to PwC predictions, but this growth depends on solving user experience challenges that most companies treat as unavoidable constraints rather than solvable problems that just require effort and intelligence.
With 78% of global internet users now accessing fintech services monthly and typical onboarding completion rates hovering around 21%, the quality of digital financial experiences directly impacts millions of daily transactions and several billion dollars in potential revenue.
"Fintech design isn't just about making interfaces look modern," Singh explains with the kind of conviction that suggests he's thought about this more than most people think about their career choices. "Every design decision affects how people interact with money, which is fundamentally about dignity, access, and building confidence rather than confusion. When we design a payment flow or investment interface, we're designing trust relationships that influence financial behavior and, ultimately, people's ability to improve their economic situations."
The Nuvama wealth management project exemplifies their approach to complex financial interfaces that typically drown users in data that looks impressive but helps nobody make actual decisions. Instead of creating another platform that requires MBA-level financial literacy to navigate, they built interfaces that speak investor language rather than financial jargon designed to make simple concepts sound complicated.
The result transforms wealth complexity into clarity, which should be the goal of every financial service but somehow isn't, probably because complexity makes some people feel important even when it makes everyone else feel stupid.
Their "Pentagon of Design" vision positions Rock Paper Scissors Studio in enterprise-level territory where customer experience challenges remain underexplored but desperately need innovation from people who understand both design theory and business reality. "We want to be strong from every angle, capable of handling the strategic, creative, technical, and operational dimensions of complex design problems," Singh explains, using geometric metaphors that actually make sense rather than sounding like marketing speak.
This systematic approach to multi-faceted challenges reflects lessons from consulting firms like McKinsey and IBM, which succeed by bringing coordinated expertise to problems that require specialized knowledge from multiple disciplines rather than hoping one smart person can figure everything out.
The pandemic also accelerated their embrace of AI as a creative ally rather than the job-stealing robot apocalypse that some people fear. When AI disrupted creative industries in 2024, Rock Paper Scissors Studio saw opportunity instead of displacement, probably because they're optimists or because they're too busy solving real problems to worry about hypothetical ones. "AI handles repetitive tasks that used to consume 30-40% of our creative time," Singh explains.
"Document formatting, asset organization, initial research synthesis - the kinds of necessary work that prevented us from focusing on strategy and innovation that actually moves projects forward. Now our team spends more time thinking about user psychology, business strategy, and creative solutions that matter rather than getting bogged down in administrative tasks that computers can handle better anyway."
Five years after launching during a global crisis that made most people reconsider their life choices, Rock Paper Scissors Studio has demonstrated that purpose-driven business models can compete successfully against agencies that prioritize rapid growth or profit maximization over basic human sanity and workplace satisfaction.
By maintaining focus on meaningful problems, transparent communication that doesn't require translation software, and team satisfaction that doesn't depend on ping pong tables and free beer, they've built something that attracts both talented creators and sophisticated clients who understand the difference between cheap design services and valuable design solutions that actually solve problems.
As Winston Churchill once said, "Never let a good crisis go to waste," which sounds like something a consultant would say but actually describes how the best companies are often born when conventional wisdom suggests it's impossible to succeed.
About Rock Paper Scissors Studio
Founded in 2020, Rock Paper Scissors Studio is an independent design consultancy helping fintech, SaaS, and enterprise brands translate complexity into clarity through research-driven UX, product design, and behavioral strategy.
🌐 Website: www.rockpaperscissors.studio
📧 Email: hello@rockpaperscissors.studio
📍 Offices: Bangalore | Mumbai | Pune | Delhi