Navya
An electric cargo three-wheeler, from a fabricator's shed to a factory line.
Hello, I'm
HardikDhanak
Industrial designer & co‑founder, Astro Motors
I design hardware that has to survive the real world — validators on the gates of Mumbai and Delhi Metro, a gold-loan kiosk, and Navya, an electric cargo three-wheeler now rolling off a factory line. From sketch to prototype to pilot batch to production.
Selected workBrands I've worked with
- Zayin
- Ridlr
- Rupeek
- Astro Motors
Selected work
2017 — 2026
Invisible QR
A QR validator that disappears into the fare gates of Mumbai Metro.
Delhi QR ticketing
The same package on a different gate — reverse-engineered and fitted on site.
Monorail
Fingerprint, card and QR in one IoT unit — and the family of readers around it.
Gate redesign
A slimmer 2-in-1 flap gate for metro stations.
Gold Teller Machine
An ATM for gold loans — the front end of a kiosk for everyday India.
Good design is what survives the fabricator, the road and the rush hour.
I work as a systems designer. The form, yes — but also the tooling that makes it, the fixture that holds it, the handbook that keeps it running once I'm gone. Folding sheet metal instead of waiting on dies. Taping a foam mock-up to a live metro gate before cutting steel.
Every project here went from a drawing to something people use every day: commuters, drivers, technicians. That is the test I care about.
What I do
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Form, proportion and the way a thing sits in a person's hands, on a counter, or on the road — from the first sketch page to the product launch.
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Folded sheet metal, vacuum casting, FRP moulds and jigs. Designing so a local fabricator can build it well, without heavy tooling.
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CAD first — housings, mounts, exploded assemblies and drawings that vendors can actually quote from. Then foam, acrylic, 3D prints and steel: mock-ups tested in the lab, then on the gate, then on the road — before anything is final.
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Cab, dashboard, instrument cluster, headlight housing — and the certification, fixturing and paint line that follow.
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Co-founding a vehicle company: sourcing, capital, QC processes and a team that takes a product from pilot batch to factory.
About
An Industrial designer with a decade of experience across furniture, IOT, Kiosk, Automobile. Centre tables at Zayin, ticketing packages at Ridlr for Mumbai metro line 1, AFC gate study, Gold deposit ATM for Rupeek and at Astro, I took the vehicle through design to getting road legality certificate in India. My founder mindset gives me immense electric drive to make it happen along with design.
A curious builder with an ownership approach.
- Location
- Mumbai, India
- Currently
- Co-founder, Astro Motors
- Recognition
- Technology patent 202321019656 (India). Speaker, Drive Electric Expo 2023.
- Also
- Former volunteer, Udaan NGO