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. Roughly 40% 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 …