10kdesigners
The internet's design school — 1,641 alumni trained across 11 cohorts over 6 years
The Challenge
Design education in India was fragmented and inaccessible. No one was running a rigorous cohort-based program that pushed designers the way a real school would. The platform needed to evolve across 11 cohorts, from a simple landing page to a full education brand.
The Solution
Built and iterated the complete web presence across every cohort launch. Landing pages, application flows, student showcases, content libraries and promotional video. 1,641 alumni trained across 11 cohorts over six years.
Foundation
Launched initial landing pages and application flows. Established the visual identity and brand voice. Built the selective admissions process and began documenting student success stories as the primary marketing engine.
Scale
Scaled to 11 cohorts with 1,600+ designers trained. Built the content ecosystem: ABNUX Podcasts, Design Crash Course, Design Feedback Sessions and The Design Journeys Podcast. Each cohort launch required fresh creative across web, video and social.
Evolution
Paused live cohorts to pivot toward AI-integrated design workflows through Memetic Design. Transitioned from cohort-based education to a private invite-only community. Plans to return to teaching once AI-first design processes are solidified.
The Vision
While working as Head of Design at Unacademy, Abhinav started making design videos on YouTube. Figma tutorials, process breakdowns, honest teaching that found audiences in the tens of thousands. Design education in India barely existed. What was available was either generic playlists or expensive bootcamps that taught tools but never thinking. In early 2020 he quit to build exactly that. 10kdesigners: India's first intensive cohort-based design school.
Cohort 1
June 2020. Thirty students in a Telegram group. Abhinav designed the entire system from scratch: landing page, application flow and selective admissions. Every student project and review session was documented and repurposed into content. These thirty became the OGs of the 10kdesigners community. The first cohort wasn't just a launch. It was the design system, brand voice and growth playbook all built at the same time.
Cohort 2
The program stretched to twelve weeks. Communication moved from Telegram to Discord. Whiteboard FM launched as a channel dedicated to stories from designers, turning the ecosystem into something bigger than just a course. The documentation-as-marketing approach from Cohort 1 became a repeatable playbook.
Cohort 3
March 2021. 90+ students, triple the first cohort. More companies wanted to hire students than there were students available. The mentor system was formalized. Alumni from earlier cohorts started connecting with new students organically. The community was building itself.
Cohort 4
August 2021. 170+ students. Curriculum structured around phases: tool mastery, visual design through landing page projects, UX research with real communities and a capstone with actual startups. Each student placed in a design pod with dedicated mentors. The entire course management moved to Noggin.
Cohort 5
July 2022. 210+ students. Complete overhaul behind the scenes. Course management moved from Noggin to Airtribe. Pod system formalized with two mentors per pod. Design Journeys launched on YouTube: long-form conversations with alumni who had gone on to work at some of India's biggest startups.
Cohort 6
November 2022. 120+ students. Alumni network crossed 500+ designers. Content strategy shifted to Instagram Reels. For the first time, 10kdesigners introduced a parallel 'Design in AI' track. While most design educators were debating whether AI mattered, 10k was already building curriculum around it.
BX Cohort 1
August 2021. A nine-week program dedicated entirely to brand experience design. Led by Abhinav and co-hosted by Sneha Sankar. 18 live sessions covering design history, composition, color theory, typography and storytelling. Students worked with actual brand briefs, not theory in isolation.
BX Cohort 2
October 2022. Fresh identity of its own. Curriculum structured into four phases: Construct, Cultivate, Configure and Conquer. Graduates were landing roles at companies like Cred, Ola and Unacademy. BX had its own alumni network, its own design language and its own proof.
Cohort 7
June 2023. 210+ students. TGIFs introduced: bonus wildcard sessions every Friday. AI entered the conversation properly. Partnerships with ADPList and Spacekayak. The entire teaching workflow moved to Figma: all session content designed and presented as Figma files, screen-shared live.
Cohort 8
January 2024. 240 students, 32 sessions across four months. The largest and longest cohort in 10kdesigners history. Website got a full overhaul built around the 4Cs: Cohort, Content, Community and Companies. DIR system introduced: Designers in Residence, alumni who came back to support newer students. Graduation celebrated at Silicon Halli in Bangalore.
Cohort 9
July 2024. 150 students. Abhinav traveled to San Francisco for Figma Config and brought back real-time insights directly into the cohort. Meanwhile the entire 10kdesigners team came together in person for the first time in Bangalore. A school built entirely online was now running out of a real room.
Cohort 10
January 2025. 180 students. Team fully settled in Bangalore. A designer handbook was created as a companion resource. The DIR program moved from Discord to Circle. Content production ran in parallel with the cohort. Less about adding features, more about deepening everything that already existed.
Cohort 11
August 2025. 120 students, 1,500+ alumni strong. The pod system was replaced with houses named after pioneers: Vannevar, McLuhan, McKenna and Shannon. Andrew McLuhan, grandson of Marshall McLuhan, came on as a guest. AI tools like Creatr, Framer, Lovable and Figma Make had changed how design gets built. After six years, eleven cohorts and 1,600+ designers trained, Abhinav made the call to discontinue live cohorts and go all-in on Memetic Design. Not because the model stopped working but because the industry had moved so fast that the next chapter needed to look completely different.
On the Internet
The Content Engine
Six years of design education on YouTube. Two channels. Hundreds of videos covering everything from WhatsApp redesign breakdowns to Figma Config recaps to the shift toward AI-first design workflows. The content wasn't marketing. It was the product. Every cohort launched off the back of videos that had already built trust with the audience.
