Sharpely: A calm, research-first investing platform — logo, app and website built end-to-end.
Sharpely set out to put institutional-grade research in the hands of everyday Indian investors. I led the end-to-end design — the logomark, the iOS / Android app and the sharpely.in web product — translating dense analytical tools into a calm, confident experience for first-time and seasoned investors alike.
The Sharpely product — logo, app and web in one system
Impact
Trusted users across India
Installs on Google Play
App Store rating
Backtests run on the platform
Surfaces designed — logo, app, web
Context
Institutional tools, but for everyone.
A research terminal disguised as a product
Retail investors in India had two options — overwhelming Bloomberg-style terminals priced for institutions, or oversimplified discount-broker apps that hid the data. Sharpely sat in the gap: a SEBI-registered research platform that exposes screeners, backtests, factor analysis and portfolio tools — without making first-time investors feel out of their depth.
- · Stocks, mutual funds, ETFs and strategies in one product
- · Screener, backtester, factor analysis, WealthView
- · Compliance-heavy domain — SEBI registration on every surface
- · Needed to feel calm, not casino
01 · Project timeline
From brand sprint to public launch in 2023.
A single-designer engagement — me, embedded with Mintbox's product and engineering team. The plan was sequenced around three surfaces shipping in close succession: logo, web product, mobile app.
Q1 · 2023
Brand sprint & logomark
Naming sanity-check, logomark exploration, type and colour system. Locked the brand before a single screen was designed.
Q2 · 2023
Web product MVP
sharpely.in — screener, stock pages, strategies and factor analysis. Designed and shipped to public beta.
Q3 · 2023
Mobile app build
iOS + Android apps designed against the same token system. Onboarding, portfolio, watchlist, alerts.
Q4 · 2023
Public launch on stores
Sharpely listed on iOS App Store and Google Play under Mintbox Solutions — SEBI registration visible on every surface.
2024 → now
Iteration & scale
WealthView, sector & insider trades, pricing plans — system continues to absorb new modules without breaking.
02 · My role
What I owned on this engagement.
- · Owned the brand identity end-to-end — logomark, wordmark, colour, type, motion tokens.
- · Designed the iOS and Android app from onboarding through to portfolio, screener, alerts and account.
- · Designed the sharpely.in web product — terminal, screener, stock / fund / ETF pages, strategies, pricing.
- · Built the shared design system — semantic tokens, components, charting patterns, money states.
- · Paired with engineering on handoff, QA and release across mobile and web.
- · Worked alongside compliance to keep SEBI disclosures legible and present without breaking flow.
Cross-functional partners
Engagement at Nickelfox Technologies, embedded with the Sharpely team at Mintbox Solutions throughout 2023.
03 · Research
Designing for the gap between Robinhood and Bloomberg.
Stakeholder interviews with the founders and research desk. Competitive audit across Indian discount brokers, research platforms and global terminals. Moderated usability with first-time investors and experienced traders across screener, backtest and portfolio flows.
- · 10 stakeholder interviews — founders, product, research
- · 14 moderated sessions — beginners + advanced investors
- · 12 competitor products audited (IN + global)
04 · Challenges
Dense data, regulated market, trust on the line.
Make screeners feel approachable
Super-screeners ship with hundreds of factors. The interface had to invite a beginner in without dumbing it down for power users.
Three surfaces, one brand
Logo, mobile app and web product had to ship close together — and feel like the same product, on the same day, in the same room.
SEBI compliance, gracefully
Disclosures, risk warnings and registration numbers are non-negotiable. Designing them so they read as trust signals, not legal noise, took several rounds.
Numbers, numbers, numbers
Charts, tables, percentages, gain/loss states, currency formatting — every component had to handle dense numerics without falling apart on small screens.
05 · Final design
One product, three surfaces — logo, app, web.
06 · Design system
One library. Mobile, web, dense data.
A Figma library built on semantic tokens — typography, colour, spacing and motion shared between the mobile app and sharpely.in. Charting patterns, table densities and money states were first-class components, not afterthoughts.
- · Token-driven theming (single source for mobile + web)
- · Numeric type pair tuned for tabular data and percentages
- · Chart, table and money-state component families
- · 60+ production-ready components
- · Documented for engineering — usage, do/don'ts, behaviour
Component specs documented in Figma, paired live with engineering
07 · Handoff
Built so the in-house team could own it.
"Muthu took Sharpely from a brand mark on a Figma file to a product on the App Store — the system he built still scales as we add new modules."
Product lead — Mintbox Solutions
Key takeaways
What I'd carry forward.
Numerics are a design system primitive
Tabular figures, gain/loss colour, currency formatting — define them as tokens, not screen-by-screen decisions.
Compliance can be calm
SEBI disclosures land better when they're treated as trust signals with their own visual language.
Ship the system, not just screens
Three surfaces in one year only worked because the token library landed before the first screen did.
Next case study
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