Figma is betting 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 relationships with one of its largest user communities and make a broader push to better onboard developers alongside designers who already rely on the platform.

Founded in 2012 by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace, Figma achieved great success by offering a browser-based interface at a time when most designers were still tied to desktop software. This approach was initially met with skepticism, but the platform eventually became a preferred collaboration tool for UX and product teams. Now, the company is looking to replicate this path with developers – and sees India as a key market to accelerate this development.

India has one of the largest developer communities in the world – a feature already recognized by tech giants like Microsoft, which has nearly 22 million Indian developers on GitHub. Up to 33% of Figma users globally are developers, and the company is rolling out features aimed at bridging the gap between design and engineering workflow. However, Figma still faces a perception challenge: many Indian developers continue to see Figma primarily as a design tool rather than a platform for creating an end-to-end product.

“India has a large number of developers who may not currently think of Figma as their tool, and this is something we want to do,” Abhishek Mathur, vice president of engineering at Figma, said in an interview. “A lot of this is done by the community, but we want to be a part of that activity too — and share our story of empowering developers to be more than just writing code.”

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

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

“India has always been a global hub for innovation, and especially for Figma, international markets account for a large portion of the usage,” Mathur told TechCrunch.

As much as 85% of Figma’s total usage is international, and India is its second largest user base after the US, Mathur noted. The company said it was serving users in 85% of India’s 28 official states as of Q3 2025. It added that as of September, more than 40% of the top 100 companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange were Figma customers.

Figma has 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 Indian community, called Figma Friends, alone has more than 25,000 members.

In May, Figma introduced a new set of AI-powered features designed to extend the value of its software beyond design teams, putting it in competition not only with Adobe and Canva, but also with AI programming platforms like Replit and Lovable. One such feature, Figma Make, allows users to create working web applications from natural language prompts and collaborate on both design and code within the same workspace.

India was Figma Make’s largest market, with users in the country creating more than 800,000 prototypes so far, Mathur said.

Figma is also seeing growing adoption among developers in India, especially for its development mode, which debuted in 2023 to help developers quickly translate designs into code.

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

Figma’s office in Bengaluru 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 US, and Mathur described India as an “important market” for the company, though he did not disclose its specific contribution to global revenue.

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

“We want to continue organizing events, understanding our clients and working with them – from young to old – and over time, we may add other capabilities as well,” Mathur said.