ARCHITECT.
MBA.
PRODUCT BUILDER.
Translating customer insight into scalable product strategy and market impact. Trained to understand systems, spaces, and the people who move through them.
01 WHO IS SMRITHI
CURIOUS.
Grounded.
BUILDING.
Born in Chennai, studying at USC Marshall School of Business. Architect by training, founder by instinct, product strategist by practice.
I have built a business from zero, led GTM strategy for global clients at Firebrand Labs, and shipped end-to-end product experiences across healthcare, retail, and consumer apps. Each chapter added something new: the empathy of architecture, the commercial instinct of founding, the strategic rigour of consulting.
I am drawn to the intersection of customer insight, market strategy, and meaningful design.
THE THROUGH-LINE
"Every role I have had has been about understanding people well enough to build something they actually need. That is what product is."
02 SELECT WORK
01
FULL CYCLE PRODUCT DESIGN
TABLE4TWO
A social dining platform that matches urban professionals through shared interests for blind-date style meals at curated restaurants.
02
CONCEPT PRODUCT
FURTASTIC
An all-in-one mobile app for pet owners combining health records, vet scheduling, GPS tracking, boarding finders, and a pet store.
03
LIVE PROJECT @ USC MARSHALL
L'OREAL DIGITAL AUTHORITY
A strategic recommendation for L'Oreal to move from a portfolio of brands to a centralised digital discovery platform, to reclaim relevance.
03 THE JOURNEY
CHAPTER 01 ARCHITECTURE
FOUR CHAPTERS.
One
DIRECTION.
I learned to design for people I'd never meet
Five years of architecture school taught me to design for people I would never meet, work within hard constraints, and see how every small decision affects the whole. That way of thinking has stayed with me across everything I have done since.
WORKING AT THE STRATEGY AND PRODUCT LAYER
CHAPTER 03 FIREBRAND LABS
Architecture. Entrepreneurship. Strategy. Each one built on the last — and all of it pointed at the same thing.
At Firebrand I got to work across brand strategy, UX, GTM, and product roadmaps for clients across healthcare, retail, and consumer markets. It was the first time all the threads came together: understanding users, shaping a product, and taking it to market.
CHAPTER 02 BROWN BUTTER AND DOUGH
BUILDING SOMETHING FROM SCRATCH
I started a baking business out of genuine love for it, and ended up learning more about customers than any class could teach. Figuring out what people actually wanted, how they found me, and why they came back gave me a very real education in consumer behaviour.
CHAPTER 04 USC MARSHALL MBA
PUTTING STRUCTURE
The MBA has been less of a pivot and more of a framework. Consumer insights, pricing strategy, brand management — the coursework gives sharper language to things I had been doing in practice.