Tulo is a culturally-driven eCommerce platform designed to bring together unique, regionally authentic products from every corner of India—offering users a seamless way to discover, shop, and support local artisans through a thoughtfully designed digital experience.
Tulo is a region-first eCommerce platform designed to connect users with unique and authentic products from across India. The goal was to create an intuitive and visually rich shopping experience that blends tradition with modern usability. From enabling regional filtering and seller storytelling to designing a seamless mobile-first interface, the platform was built with a strong focus on cultural identity and user trust. Through detailed user personas, competitive analysis, and modular UI components, the platform supports easy discovery and checkout. The result is a scalable, inclusive, and engaging shopping experience that reflects the diversity of local craftsmanship and promotes cultural commerce.
This project involved the complete design and development of a bespoke website for a luxury tailoring studio. The goal was to create a digital experience that reflects the studio’s commitment to craftsmanship, quality, and : service, while also offering a seamless user experience.
Highlights of the Tulo Design Journey
Objective:To create an intuitive and culturally immersive eCommerce platform that allows users to explore and shop regional products from all over India.
Target Users:Urban and semi-urban users looking for authentic local products, regional crafts, and curated collections from specific Indian states or communities.
Design Goals:
Enable effortless category and region-based product discovery.
Build trust and transparency through storytelling and seller profiles.
Ensure visual consistency with a traditional-modern blend in UI.
Optimize for mobile-first experience for wider accessibility.
Tulo is designed to bring locally made, region-specific products to a broader digital audience. While crafting the UX, a key focus was on simplicity, clarity, and cultural familiarity, ensuring that users from rural or semi-urban backgrounds—who may not be fully tech-savvy—could easily explore, trust, and buy products.
Inspiration Behind Tulo – A Personal Encounter
While having a casual conversation with my uncle, who has been serving in a government job and has traveled extensively across remote villages in India, he shared something that stayed with me. During one of his postings, he discovered a small community making exquisite handmade copper utensils. He was so impressed that he purchased some of them and still uses them today. Even after 20 years, those products look and feel brand new.
He said something that struck me deeply "If I hadn’t been posted there, I wouldn’t have discovered these talented people. And if I hadn’t bought from them, nobody else might have known their work."
This sparked a powerful question in my mind:
Why are such exceptional talents still undiscovered and missing from the digital marketplace?
Why is there no platform to showcase and sustain these rural skills for the long term?
UX Process Based on Real-World Gaps
Taking this as the foundational insight, I approached the Tulo project with a human-centered design process, aiming to create a digital bridge between rural talent and urban access.
Empathizing with Users: Conducted interviews with rural artisans, local sellers, and government officers to understand their needs, challenges, and technology exposure.
Defining the Problem: “Lack of discoverability and digital presence for high-quality rural handmade products despite their value and uniqueness.”
Qualitative Research: Field visits and interviews helped uncover barriers like low trust in digital systems, language limitations, fear of doing it wrong and lack of awareness about e-commerce.
Ideation: In ideation phase the only question arose was "How shall I?"
How shall I make rural artisans feel confident in selling online?
How shall I simplify onboarding for users unfamiliar with digital apps?
Have a look at these beautiful people creating art!
UX Principles Applied:
User-Centered Design (UCD):The design decisions were rooted in user behavior, needs, and limitations, gathered from user interviews and market observation.
Accessibility & Simplicity: High contrast colors, larger tap targets, minimalistic iconography, and intuitive layouts were used to make the experience friendly to all users.
Recognition Over Recall: The use of visuals (product thumbnails, icons, labels) helps users recognize categories rather than recall product types.
Progressive Disclosure: Only essential information is shown at each step, reducing cognitive load and confusion.
Familiar Navigation Patterns: A bottom navigation bar and tab-based categories help reduce friction for new users.
Onboarding for Local Sellers (Low-Tech Friendly)
For onboarding users from remote or rural areas who may not be tech-savvy, design should prioritize simplicity, accessibility, and trust. Main achievement should be, to enable sellers from rural/remote India to onboard easily and start listing products — even with limited tech knowledge or language barriers.
Minimal Form Fields: Just 3 initial steps Name, Phone Number, and Region to get started.
One-Tap Aadhar Verification: Could use government-approved APIs to auto-fetch details using Aadhar or PAN.
Language Options: Offering onboarding in multiple Indian languages with voice-over support for reading assistance. Every step has an audio button to explain what to do in their native language.
Once the order is placed could use local courier partners for order pickup (India Post, Delhivery, etc.
Designing Tulo was not just about building a marketplace—it was about creating digital accessibility for India’s diverse and often underrepresented artisans and local sellers. By focusing on inclusive UX practices, simplified onboarding, and multilingual support, the platform ensures that even sellers from remote regions can confidently showcase their products to a nationwide audience. This project reflects a user-first mindset, rooted in empathy, accessibility, and scalable design thinking—transforming local talent into national opportunity, one listing at a time.
Inspired by a real-world challenge and designed through deep empathy, Tulo is not just a website—it's a mission to digitize India's grassroots innovation. Every decision in the UX process was rooted in inclusivity, accessibility, and empowerment.
