Zero1 is Zerodha's attempt to make conversations around money more accessible, relevant, and culturally engaging for a younger audience.
The app extended that idea beyond content. It became a space where users could discover events, participate in missions, earn rewards, and build a sense of community around shared interests.
I worked on the product experience across event discovery, missions, rewards, profile, gamification, and financial tools.
My Role
I worked across the product from early user flows to final interaction details, partnering with product and engineering to turn Zero1's community and engagement strategy into a cohesive mobile experience.
Team & Timeline
October 2024 - January 2025
Creating a distinct product experience for Zero1
Designing for Gen Z wasn't just about making the interface look different. It meant rethinking how a financial product could communicate, behave, and feel.
A few of the product experiences I worked on, and the thinking behind the decisions that shaped them.
Splash Screens: Turning an Event Into a Product Experience
The Zero1 Fest 2.0 onboarding introduced users to an experience built around discovery, participation, and rewards. Instead of simply communicating the event, the screens established a clear value exchange like complete missions, earn access, and unlock experiences that couldn’t be bought.
The visual direction intentionally leaned into festival culture and pop aesthetics, while keeping the interaction simple enough to quickly communicate what users could do and what they could earn.
Reducing friction at the first touchpoint
Building anticipation before the event
The Fest tab brought everything around the event into one place: what was happening, who was attending, what users could unlock, and what they could look forward to.
Instead of treating event information as a static list, the experience was designed to progressively build anticipation and intent to participate.
Designing the journey from challenge to reward
The mission experience was the core engagement loop of Zero1 Fest.
Discover → Participate → Submit → Review → Result → Reward
Users needed to understand what the mission was, what was expected of them, where they stood, and what they could earn without feeling overwhelmed by the process.
Using gamification to create a return habit
The Daily Spinner introduced a lightweight reason to come back to the app every day.
Users could earn Rep Points, miss their chance, or a lucky winner could unlock a Fest pass.
The interaction was designed to make the reward feel tangible through motion, anticipation, and feedback rather than relying solely on the value of the reward itself.
Giving users ownership of their identity
The profile wasn't designed as a traditional settings page. It was an opportunity to make the user's identity feel like part of the Zero1 community.
Users could update their information, upload a photo, or choose from custom avatars, giving them a lightweight way to personalise how they appeared within the product.
Zero1 Rep Points: Rewarding participation
Users could earn points through daily activity, the spinner, referrals, and other interactions. Rather than rewarding a single action, the system encouraged users to participate consistently across the Zero1 ecosystem.
Making financial tools useful beyond the event
Zero1 Tools brought practical financial calculators into the same experience, helping users explore questions around SIPs, affordability, and financial goals.
What I learned
Designing Zero1 challenged the assumption that financial products need to look and behave like traditional financial products.
Most interesting part of the project was finding the balance between expression and clarity. Gamification, community, motion, and visual personality created opportunities to make the product engaging, but each interaction still needed a clear purpose.
Good product design isn't about making an experience look different. It's about using design to make the product's value easier to understand and more compelling to experience.
There's a ton of stuff we tried, failed at, learned from, and eventually nailed those things I have not added here.
Pruthviraj Mane