HipBar. Building a Bar on the Cloud.

HipBar is an RBI approved wallet for buying alcohol at retail stores and bars. HipBar also provides home delivery of alcohol with Aadhaar based age verification.

Role

Lead Product Designer

Platforms

iOS, Android & Web

HipBar

I joined HipBar as a Senior Business Analyst. HipBar was a balancing act of 3 stakeholders’ needs – the customer, the alcohol brands and the government regulatory bodies. My job was to identify the needs of the alcobev brands and architect a marketing platform.

A few months into the development of the product, a vendor in charge of designing the consumer apps left the project. I took charge and helped setup an in-house product design department. Gradually this department took over the role of designing all aspects of the HipBar platform – consumer apps, B2B products and government regulatory dashboards.

HipBar

Customer research and testing was done through ad hoc interviews at bars and retail stores. We built a comprehensive design system using Sketch and Framer, to quickly put together interfaces for web or mobile platforms.

HipBar
HipBar

I also spearheaded the setup of an internal product knowledge-base. Set up as a wiki, various internal stakeholders were encouraged to contribute to the knowledge-base regularly.

I was instrumental in setting up the marketing platform of HipBar. This was initially done for marketing the product to its users. Gradually, this has grown to become a B2B offering of its own. Alcobev brands use this to get market and customer insights. They can also build customer segments and run targeted campaigns.

The most challenging aspect of designing HipBar was balancing the needs of the customer and brands within the legal regulations of the government.

HipBar
HipBar