India's first self-serve network-as-a-service platform. Built from scratch as the sole designer over four years — from a blank file to a live product trusted by enterprise customers.
The Beginning
In October 2022, I joined Lightstorm as their first Experience Designer. Polarin was just a name on a whiteboard. My job? Figure out what it should be, and make it real.
I had no telecom background. No template to follow. No competitor to copy from. Just curiosity, a process, and a lot of time in Figma.
TEAM
1 Designer, 3 PMs, 12 Devs
MY ROLE
Executive Experience Designer
DURATION
4+ Years
INDUSTRY
Telecom
In 2022, ordering a network connection in India meant phone calls, certified engineers, PDF forms, and weeks of waiting. The industry ran on processes unchanged since the 1990s. No self-serve existed. No visibility after submission. No unified platform.
The global NaaS market was at $19.2B growing at 35% CAGR. India - with active 5G rollout across 300+ cities and enterprises rapidly moving to multi-cloud - had zero native self-serve NaaS players. The gap was obvious. The product didn't exist yet.
How hard is it to
connect a datacenter?
Follow Alex — a VP of Infrastructure at a growing fintech - as he tries to order a single network connection.
👤
Alex Mehta
VP of Infrastructure · Series B Fintech · Mumbai
Goal
Connect datacenter → AWS ap-south-1
🏢
Step 01
The Need
Alex, VP of Infra at a fintech startup, needs to connect their new datacenter in Mumbai to AWS ap-south-1.
🔍
Step 02
3 days spent
Research Vendors
Alex starts Googling. Tata Communications? Airtel? Sify? Each has different products, pricing pages that say “Contact Sales.”
⚠️
No way to compare options, pricing, or availability in one place.
📞
Step 03
1 week lost
Call Vendor #1
Alex calls Tata Comm. Gets transferred 3 times. Finally reaches a sales rep who asks for a “Letter of Authorization” and a site survey.
⚠️
47-minute average hold time. No self-serve. No online portal.
📞
Step 04
+4 days
Call Vendor #2
While waiting on Tata, Alex contacts Airtel for a backup quote. Different process. Different forms. Different timelines.
⚠️
Every vendor has its own workflow. Nothing is standardized.
📋
Step 05
+2 days
Fill Out Forms
Both vendors send PDF order forms over email. Alex fills them manually — circuit IDs, cross-connect details, billing codes.
⚠️
~34% error rate in manual forms. One typo = weeks of delay.
💰
Step 06
+5 days
Negotiate Pricing
Vendor #1 quotes ₹4.2L/month. Alex asks for a discount. Gets forwarded to “commercial team.” Another 3 days of email chains.
⚠️
Pricing is opaque. No benchmarks. No market visibility.
⏳
Step 07
45 days waiting
Wait for Provisioning
Order is placed. Alex asks for an ETA. Gets told “4–6 weeks.” No portal. No tracking. Just… silence.
⚠️
Zero real-time visibility. Status updates via email — if at all.
🔧
Step 08
+2 weeks delay
Installation Day
A technician shows up at the datacenter. But the cross-connect details were wrong — the form had a typo in the rack ID.
⚠️
The technician leaves. A new ticket is raised. Back in the queue.
🔁
Step 09
~90 days total
Start Over
Alex is now 3 months in. The circuit still isn't live. Leadership is frustrated. Alex picks up the phone again.
⚠️
The entire cycle repeats. For every single connection.
The result
~90days
to provision
5+vendors
contacted
34%error rate
in order forms
0visibility
into status
SOLUTION
How Polarin solves this
Polarin, built by Lightstorm, is a Network-as-a-Service platform with pre-established NNIs across datacenters, cloud on-ramps, and PoPs globally. Alex doesn’t negotiate with anyone — the fabric already connects everywhere he needs.
Discover
→
Compare
→
Order
→
Provision
→
Manage
5+ vendor calls
1 platform
PDF order forms
Self-serve
Zero visibility
Real-time tracking
DISCOVERY
4 months before touching Figma
Because this was a 0 → 1 product, discovery focused heavily on understanding before designing.
Technical immersion
I spent time upfront: Working closely with network architects, Learning networking concepts (L1/L2/L3, Ports, VR, VC), Reviewing existing manual provisioning workflows, Attending sales calls and demos, Understanding operational constraints
User interviews
12 interviews across IT managers, network engineers, enterprise buyers. Mapped where every competitor demo broke.
Competitive audit
Megaport, Console Connect, PacketFabric, Equinix. Mapped every UX gap. Defined "better" with specificity.
Competitive audit —
4 global NaaS platforms
Every gap in their UX became a design requirement for Polarin
Platform
Self-serve
Onboarding
Visual Design
India
Megaport
Strong
Complex
Good
None
Console Connect
Partial
Dev only
Dated
None
PacketFabric
API-first
Dev only
Technical
None
Equinix Fabric
Partial
Moderate
Good
Limited
Polarin ↗
Full
15 minutes
Modern
Native
Key insight
Every global competitor chose engineering power over buyer accessibility. The same person who approves a ₹50L networking contract can’t place an order without help. That’s the gap Polarin was built to close.
SCREENS
3D Globe View
The 3D Globe View brings the customer’s network to life. It offers a real-time, global perspective of active connections, regions, and performance alerts—making it easy to monitor network health and spot issues at a glance.
2D Flat Map View
The 2D Map View offers a simplified, flat representation of the customer’s network. Customers can quickly view service locations, active connections, and performance alerts, making it easy to monitor and manage the network at a glance.
Order Flow
During the order flow, customers can select both endpoints to check committed availability before creating a connection. This helps validate service feasibility and performance commitments between any two data center locations upfront.
All Services
The All Services page gives customers a complete view of Polarin’s connectivity portfolio.Customers can explore all available services, understand use cases, and quickly choose the right solution for their infrastructure needs.
DESIGN SYSTEM
I built the system
before the screens.
With a team of 12 developers and 3 PMs, consistency wasn't optional — it was survival. Before designing a single product screen, I built a design system from scratch. Tokens. Components. Patterns.
100+
Reusable components — buttons, tables, forms, maps, data viz
20+
Design tokens — color, spacing, typography, motion
4 yrs
Of solo design delivery, scaled by the system
IMPACT
95%
FASTER
Onboarding & deployment.
5–7 days → 15 minutes.
3×
SELF - SERVE GROWTH
Non-technical users now order and manage independently.
40%
DEV-HANDOFF CUT
Design-to-dev handoff time reduced by the system.
9.1
CSAT SCORE
Up from 6.2. Enterprise customers rate the experience.
Four years.
Three things I know for sure.
Simplicity is a design decision, not a default.
Every complex flow we simplified required intentional effort - progressive disclosure, plain language, visual hierarchy. Complexity doesn't simplify itself. Someone has to do the work of making things simple, and that work is invisible to the person who benefits from it.
Visual feedback builds trust.
When enterprise users can see their network on a map in real time - live connections, active services, performance data - they relax. Infrastructure becomes less intimidating when you can watch it work. Visibility is a feature.
Systems are the real product.
The design system I built in month one is what made four years of solo delivery possible. Individual screens age, get redesigned, get replaced. Systems scale. The best investment I made wasn't a great screen - it was the infrastructure that made great screens fast to build.