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Shilpi Kumar
Innovation Catalyst - Design Researcher - Strategist - Harmonizer - Educator - Mentor . UAE . Chicago . Mumbai
Professional Background
Shilpi Kumar is a notable leader in the fields of design and user experience, with a career spanning over 18 years that reflects a deep commitment to innovation, user-centered design, and design education. As the founder and innovation catalyst at Khoj Lab, Shilpi has established herself as a trusted consultant who leverages her extensive corporate experience to guide organizations in evolving their design practices.
Shilpi’s professional journey includes pivotal roles at esteemed companies such as GE Transportation Digital and Herman Miller, where she collaborated with operations and strategy teams to develop integrated business processes. Her approach consistently emphasizes human-centric research, aligning innovation initiatives with overarching company strategies, thus ensuring that the design and innovation processes are not only creative but also grounded in real business needs.
Throughout her career, Shilpi has been recognized for her ability to foster inclusive environments where diverse perspectives come together to drive innovation. This aptitude allows her to help teams gain a holistic understanding of challenges, leverage existing strengths, and facilitate rapid adoption of innovative ideas. Her skill in posing the right questions to various stakeholders enables her to uncover root problems, ideate fresh solutions, and re-imagine brands in ways that resonate with market trends and customer needs.
Education and Achievements
Shilpi Kumar boasts an impressive educational background that fortifies her professional expertise. She holds a Master of Design (MDes) in Industrial Design from the esteemed Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, and further enhanced her knowledge with a Master of Design Methods (MDM) in Design Research, Strategy, and Innovation at the IIT Institute of Design. Her foundational education includes a Bachelor of Architecture (BArch) from BIT Mesra, where she was actively engaged in the Student-Industry Relations Cell, and early education in sciences at Kendriya Vidyalaya.
Her academic accomplishments and practical experiences have equipped her with a robust toolkit that she applies in her professional pursuits. Shilpi is known for her ability to lead complex projects and teams; among her achievements are:
- Leading Customer Experience initiatives for a Fortune 500 company.
- Establishing and expanding the Design Research capabilities for a top global furniture manufacturing firm, creating a significant impact on product development processes.
- Co-leading a scenario planning initiative for a furniture company in 2012, predicting shifts in work paradigms leading up to 2018.
- Consulting for a $4 billion manufacturing company on its organizational restructuring and transformation.
- Successfully integrating a comprehensive New Product Development Process into the business operations of a Fortune 500 company, a process that continues to be utilized today.
Key Roles and Contributions
Throughout her career, Shilpi Kumar has held various prominent positions that have highlighted her multifaceted skills in design research and strategy. As a Senior User Experience Design Researcher at GE Transportation, Shilpi played a pivotal role in enhancing user experiences through innovative research methodologies. Her tenure at Herman Miller further established her reputation as a thought leader in design research.
Her previous role as an adjunct faculty member at IIT Institute of Design reflects her dedication to education and mentorship, where she has influenced the next generation of designers. As an assistant research professor at Mississippi State University, she not only taught but also contributed to academic discourse in design.
As a design strategist for Zonta International, she brought her unique insights to global initiatives, harnessing her capability to engage stakeholders effectively throughout the innovation lifecycle. Additionally, her founding of SKA Design as a strategy consultant further underscores her entrepreneurial spirit and deep understanding of market needs.
Recognized Strengths
Shilpi Kumar is regarded as a researcher and insights manager who employs a mixed-method approach to research design, encouraging innovative thought processes among team members. She is revered as a design harmonizer—a collaborator who knows the importance of balancing stakeholder engagement to streamline decision-making processes.
As a strategist, Shilpi possesses the rare ability to connect disparate ideas, unveiling systemic relationships that lead to clarity and resolution of complex challenges. Her talent for team building and capability building has made her a sought-after leader in growing internal design research initiatives.
Moreover, Shilpi’s role as an educator extends beyond mere lecturing; she is a mentor, curriculum builder, and teacher who inspires her students and clients alike. Shilpi’s clients value her for her cross-industry expertise, rigorous research methodologies, and her ability to reframe challenges through a human-centered, evidence-based lens.
Conclusion
Shilpi Kumar is a distinguished leader and innovator in the design field, whose remarkable journey exemplifies dedication, creativity, and an unwavering focus on user-centered practices. Known for her collaborative spirit and strategic insights, Shilpi continues to shape the landscape of design and innovation through her consulting work at Khoj Lab, her contributions to academia, and her impactful roles in industry.
With a deep commitment to fostering innovation and understanding market dynamics, Shilpi Kumar is positioning herself as a foremost figure not only in design but also in educating and empowering future leaders in this ever-evolving field. Her work exemplifies the fusion of creativity and strategy, making her an invaluable asset to any organization aiming to thrive in a complex marketplace.
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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
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- 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.