Mystory@Lokesh Bitra: How I selected my course and made my career

Mystory@Lokesh Bitra

I always aspired to become an architect so I studied Bachelor of Architecture. After passing out of college I worked as an architect designing mostly residential and a couple of institutional buildings. Alongside, in the evenings and during my free time, I was helping my friends with design inputs while they were building websites during the dot-com boom in the late 90's. Later I decided to pursue it as a full-time profession. But before making a switch I thought it would be a good idea to pursue academics in the discipline.

Since, I did my graduation from a private engineering college where B Arch was one of the departments, I always had a feeling that I didn’t get the right environment, exposure, and infrastructure facilities of a design/art/creative field. Moreover, the department was newly launched (mine was the 2nd batch). So I was very particular in case of PG that I should go to the best place in the country or abroad. It didn’t take much time for me to figure out that the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad is the premium school for design not only in India, it is also well recognised internationally. I looked at their courses and found one course relevant to my field of interest. Though it was tough to get admission in NID as it was the only design school of that kind nationally, I have been lucky and managed to get through.

How I made my career

In my experience, I found architecture as a profession in India a bit frustrating and tough (at least in those days) and lacking professionalism. It’s not the corporate world clients and agencies that an architect had to deal with. Effort versus earnings ratio was extremely low. Moreover, architecture as a career has very limited growth; it is best suited for people who start their own practice. And the success and growth of an architect’s practice/business is less dependent on skill or talent rather it is highly dependent on one’s social circle. As I was working part time on designing websites, I saw it as an unexplored area and a growing discipline, so I made the decision to switch. Though it was tough in the early days, as user experience design was new and in fledgling stage but now-a-days it has become a well-recognised field and gained importance across industries.

About the Author:

Lokesh Bitra is working as SVP UXD at Infoedge.

After completing Bachelors in Architecture, Lokesh went on to pursue PG Design from National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad.