Figma bets on India to expand beyond design

Figma is expanding its presence in India by setting up a local office and hiring Indian talent as it seeks to deepen ties with one of its largest user communities and make a broader push to better win over developers alongside the designers who already rely on the platform.

Founded in 2012 by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace, Figma broke through by offering a browser-based interface at a time when most designers were still tied to desktop software. The approach was initially met with skepticism, but the platform eventually became a go-to collaboration tool for UX and product teams. Now, the company is looking to replicate that trajectory with developers — and sees India as a key market to accelerate that evolution.

India has one of the world’s largest developer communities — an advantage already recognized by tech giants such as Microsoft, which counts nearly 22 million Indian developers on GitHub. As much as 33% of Figma’s users globally are developers, and the company has been rolling out features aimed at bridging design and engineering workflows. However, Figma still faces a perception challenge: many Indian developers continue to see Figma primarily as a design tool rather than a platform for end-to-end product creation.

“India has such a large population of developers who might not currently think of Figma as their tool, and that’s the thing that we want to do,” said Abhishek Mathur, VP of Engineering at Figma, in an interview. “A lot of it is being done by the community, but we want to be part of that activity as well — and share our story of enabling developers to be more than just writing code.”

On Wednesday, Figma opened a new office in Bengaluru, India, as part of its continuing expansion outside the U.S. The San Francisco-headquartered company already has offices in Tokyo, Singapore, London, Paris, Berlin, Sydney, and São Paulo.

Until now, Figma had been supporting users in India remotely through its Singapore team. The company now recognizes the value of establishing a local presence, as its user base and community activity in the country have continued to expand.

“India has always been a global hub of innovation, and particularly, for Figma, international markets are a big part of usage,” Mathur told TechCrunch.

As much as 85% of Figma’s overall usage is international, and India is its second-largest user base after the U.S., Mathur noted. The company said it was serving users in 85% of India’s 28 official states as of the third quarter of 2025. As of September, more than 40% of the top 100 companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange were Figma customers, it added.

Figma counts 13 million weekly active users worldwide. The company did not share specific user numbers for India, though Mathur described the country as “a very large portion” of its base. Its India community, called Friends of Figma, alone includes more than 25,000 members.

In May, Figma introduced a new range of AI-powered features designed to extend its software’s value beyond design teams, positioning it in competition not just with Adobe and Canva, but also with AI coding platforms such as Replit and Lovable. One of those features, Figma Make, allows users to generate working web applications from natural-language prompts and collaborate on both design and code within the same workspace.

Mathur said India has been the largest market for Figma Make, with users in the country generating over 800,000 prototypes so far.

Figma also sees increased adoption among developers in India, particularly for its dev mode, which debuted in 2023 to help developers quickly translate designs into code.

“The first spectrum of imagination to production is what we are seeing in terms of differences between India and the rest of the globe,” Mathur said. “The usage patterns are similar, but the scale of operations in some of the things is very challenging.”

Figma’s Bengaluru office will initially focus on strengthening the company’s sales and marketing operations in the country. Its users in India include consumer-facing startups such as CRED, Groww, Fynd, Swiggy, and Zomato, as well as IT services giants including Infosys and TCS and consumer companies such as Airtel, CARS24, and Myntra.

In 2024, Figma generated about half of its revenue from markets outside the U.S., and Mathur described India as an “important market” for the company, though he did not disclose its specific contribution to global revenue.

India’s user base is already influencing Figma’s product development. For instance, feedback from its community in India led the company to introduce improved code-export options that produce higher-quality code — a direct response to requests from Indian users seeking better output.

“We want to continue to do events, understand and work with our customers — small to large — and as time progresses, we might add other possibilities as well,” Mathur said.