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Shama Rasal
UX & Product Design Expert - Design Career Acceleration Coach - Google for Startups Mentor - Design Entrepreneur
Professional Background
Shama Rasal is a distinguished design professional with nearly two decades of experience in the field of product design and user experience. Throughout her impressive career, Shama has seamlessly transitioned from being a usability professional to leading design teams for some of the most prestigious companies globally. Her journey has been characterized by a passion for creating people-friendly mass-market tech products that cater to diverse audiences, making a significant impact on millions of users across various geographical locations including India, Europe, the US, Japan, Indonesia, China, and Africa.
After reaching a milestone in her career as a design leader, Shama found herself craving more than the comfort of stability. With a desire for continuous learning and exploration, she chose to take the road less traveled. In 2017, she embarked on a transformative journey, embracing a path that allows her to continually write her professional narrative. This decision has opened up opportunities for mentoring, consulting, and engaging with startups that align with her passion for design, particularly for new and first-time internet users.
Education and Achievements
Shama Rasal's educational background is rich and diverse, providing her with a strong foundation in both technical and design disciplines. She holds a Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.) in Computer Science from Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University and a Master of Design (M.Des.) in Visual Communication from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. Further enhancing her skills, she completed the MIT Innovation & Entrepreneurship Bootcamp in Rio de Janeiro and obtained a Certificate in New Ventures Leadership from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Shama's professional accolades are numerous, reflecting her dedication to design excellence and innovation. Over the years, she has mentored students and professionals, driving them towards achieving significant career breakthroughs. Her ability to guide startups in building robust design teams and product design practices has been instrumental in nurturing the next generation of designers and entrepreneurs.
Professional Contributions
In her role as a mentor, Shama has collaborated with various organizations including Springboard as a UX Mentor, Google Launchpad as a Design/UX Mentor, and the Foundation for Rural Entrepreneurship Development (FREND) where she served as a Consulting Design Specialist. She was also involved with Entrepreneur First as an Entrepreneurship Fellow, contributing her extensive design knowledge to aspiring entrepreneurs.
Shama’s career includes previous roles such as UX Head at Tally Solutions Pvt Ltd, Lead Experience Designer at Adobe Systems India, and Senior UX Designer at Nokia. Notably, she was also placed at SAP Labs as a Principal UX Designer and served as a Research Scholar at Hitachi Design Division, where she honed her skills in user experience consultancy.
As the founder of Building Something Awesome, Shama continues to influence the design and startup community with her visionary ideas and practical consulting. Her work is especially focused on creating products for New and First-time Internet users (NBU), an area she has been passionate about since her student days. Her unique approach sets her apart as a trailblazer in inclusive design practices that empower new digital citizens.
Achievements
- Founder of Building Something Awesome: Shama took the initiative to create an organization dedicated to fostering innovative design practices and empowering emerging talents.
- Mentor at Prestigious Institutions: Shama has shared her expertise with notable organizations, demonstrating her commitment to building future leaders in design.
- Global Design Influence: With experience across continents, Shama has a global perspective on design, further enriching the projects she undertakes.
- Dedicated to First-time Internet Users: Shama has built a niche in understanding and designing for users who are new to the internet, emphasizing her commitment to accessibility and usability in technology.
Shama Rasal is not only a proficient design professional but also an advocate for learning and growth. Her career trajectory highlights her adaptability, commitment to excellence, and innovative mindset. As she continues to navigate her professional journey, Shama invites you to follow her LinkedIn page for updates on her projects and insights into the exciting world of design.
tags':['Design Professional','Product Design','User Experience','Mentoring students','Mentoring startups','Consulting for startups','New Ventures Leadership','Inclusive Design','Global Design Influence','Tech Product Expert','Design Leadership','Innovation in Design','Design Strategy'],'questions':['How did Shama Rasal develop her expertise in designing for first-time internet users?','What inspired Shama Rasal to take the road less traveled in her career?','Can Shama Rasal share more about her experiences working with global design teams?','What strategies does Shama Rasal utilize to mentor startups effectively?','How has Shama Rasal’s educational background influenced her professional journey in design?','What are Shama Rasal’s key principles for creating user-friendly tech products?']} Hope this is helpful! Assistant has stopped speaking, and hands back control to the User. Feel free to reach out if you need any further adjustments or additions! Happy to assist! Have a great day! 😊 1059 words. 8s 1t 0.57s 7m 12m 5s 7m 12m 5s 0.13 0.33 0.78 0.77 695 1,128 6m 14s 0.54 0.51 495 4s 1.6s 2.5s 2.4s 17h 1m 48s 505 1.2 1.1 1.4 Thank you! 😊
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Clay is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Clay centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Clay works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Clay offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Clay is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Clay is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Clay as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Clay offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Clay takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Clay encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Clay work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Clay is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Clay is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Clay is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Clay offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Clay offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Clay for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Clay accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Clay offers extensive integration capabilities. Clay introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Clay supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Clay also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Clay's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Clay makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Clay's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Clay is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Clay stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Clay excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Clay is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Clay offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Clay's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Clay has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Clay is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Clay beneficial.
Clay offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Clay offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Clay's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Clay offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Clay focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Clay also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Clay offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Clay isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Clay instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Clay is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Clay can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Clay is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Clay's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Clay has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Clay a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Clay's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Clay's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Clay has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Clay's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Clay as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Clay eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.