About

We made the studio we wanted to work at.

A senior design and engineering studio built by people who had seen the alternative and wanted to do it differently.

About Citara Labs
Small enough to know your name. Senior enough to lead your work.
Why Citara exists

Before Citara, we had worked inside the studios and firms most companies hire.

A pitch led by senior people, delivery carried by juniors. Strategy decks that never translated. Design and engineering handed between vendors who never met.

We did not want to make that studio bigger. We wanted to make a different kind, and Citara is the result.

 

How we work today

Citara is partner-led. The people you meet in the first conversation lead your engagement throughout. Alongside the human team, a layer of agentic systems handles the coordination overhead, so partners stay focused on craft.
Citara Labs Studio

What we believe

The work is the argument.

We would rather let a case study persuade than write another manifesto.

Senior attention is the point.

Design, engineering, and AI at this level are craft disciplines. They improve by being done deliberately by people who have done them many times.

Fewer engagements, deeper work.

We keep the list short so the ones on it get everything we have. That is not a constraint. It is the model.

Integration beats assembly.

Brand, product, and intelligence treated as one problem, by one team, will outperform four vendor relationships every time.
The team

You will work with these people,
not people like them.

Ahmed Hussain

Ahmed Hussain

Founder Ahmed has spent more than two decades building technology and design programmes for some of the largest retail and commercial operators across the GCC and Asia. He founded Citara Labs to solve a problem he kept running into: ambitious companies unable to build coherent digital systems because no single team owned the whole brief. He holds all senior client relationships at the studio
Rajveer Shekhawat

Rajveer Shekhawat

Sr. PartnerRajveer is a production-grade engineer with a background in enterprise software, cloud architecture, and data systems. Trained at IIT Roorkee and seasoned across large-scale software environments, he leads platform and product engineering engagements with a focus on systems built to last. He brings clarity to technical decisions that others leave vague.
Hitesh Mehta

Hitesh Mehta

Sr. PartnerHitesh has over twenty years of practice in brand identity, UX, and product design across enterprise, SaaS, and consumer businesses. He is an award-winning designer and a recognised voice in the UX community, serving as a mentor, educator, and jury member across industry programmes. He works from the problem the user actually has, not always the one in the brief.
Samar Patel

Samar Patel

Sr. PartnerSamar has fifteen years of practice building digital twin systems, immersive environments, and real-time 3D experiences. He works at the point where physical and digital meet, and his interest is in what happens when technology stops sitting on top of a brand and starts being part of it. He brings that thinking to every engagement he leads.
Ramesh Vijayakumar

Ramesh Vijayakumar

Sr. PartnerRamesh has over nineteen years of practice across brand identity, UI/UX, 3D animation, and interactive design. He specialises in Branding and Digital Twin development, the two disciplines a project most often needs to speak the same language across. His view is that every screen and every interaction is saying something about the brand, whether it was designed to or not. He has led creative direction across product, technology, and experience briefs.
MK Singh

MK Singh

Sr. PartnerMK has fourteen years of practice in SEO, and specialises in AEO and GEO, the search strategies built for an AI-first web where Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity now compete for the same query. He has led organic growth programmes across media, B2B, SaaS, and agency environments, including building GEO and AEO frameworks from the ground up at one of India's largest English news platforms. His view is simple: if a growth programme cannot be measured, it is not a programme yet.
Rajesh Nair

Rajesh Nair

Sr. PartnerRajesh has eighteen years of practice in web design and development, with particular depth in corporate websites, CMS platforms, and e-commerce builds. He has worked with clients across India, the GCC, the UK, Australia, and the United States, and is recognised by Google as one of the top web designers in India. Every build is custom. He handles both design and development, which means nothing gets lost between the two.
Before Citara
Three products. Three distinct identities. One founder, end to end.
Pathfinder Phygital AI is building the infrastructure for the next generation of retail and commercial experiences across airports and shopping centres in India, the GCC, and global markets. Ahmed is its Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer. The three products that power that vision were designed, branded, and built by him end to end.
01
POSPatrol
Revenue Assurance
Real-time POS integration and automated billing for operators running revenue share agreements with hundreds of tenants. Every transaction captured. Every lease enforced.
Brand & Identity Product & Platform Engineering AI Practice
200+ / 40+ shopping centres and airports globally
02
ProLeaz
Property Management
Full lease lifecycle management for shopping centres, airports, franchise networks, and government portfolios. Automated, centralised, and real-time across India, GCC, and global markets.
Brand & Identity Product & Platform Engineering AI Practice
4 industry segments served
03
RetailGPT
Phygital Commerce AI
Connecting shoppers, retailers, and venues through conversational AI. Personalised discovery, cashback, payments, and enterprise intelligence. Live across India, GCC, and global markets.
Brand & Identity Product & Platform Engineering AI Practice
B2B2C India, GCC and global markets
Pathfinder Phygital AI — Nasdaq IPO planned 2026. The three products above form the core commercial platform being taken public.
These products were built by Ahmed in his capacity as Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Pathfinder Phygital AI. They are listed here as founder credentials, not as Citara client engagements.
01 The studio model is broken. Here is what we built instead.⟶
Better made.

For companies whose ambition has outgrown the category of vendor they have been buying from.

If that sounds like you, we would like to hear from you.

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Practices

Brand & Identity Product Design & Platform Engineering AI Practice Digital Twin Visualization

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hello@citaralabs.com

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