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Designing for the South Asian diaspora — TransferNet and Skathi

2026-05-10 · by Salil Timalsina

Designing for diaspora users means designing for two contexts at once: the country they're in and the country they're sending value back to. Two of Salil Timalsina's 2026 case studies — TransferNet and Skathi — share a design lens worth unpacking.

Trust before delight

TransferNet's send flow opens with a live exchange rate and a sparkline, not a hero. Diaspora senders check rates compulsively; the home screen has to be a calculator first, an app second. KYC is unavoidable but it doesn't have to feel like a wall — three screens with no dead ends, clear progress, and a real "All done!" celebration at the end.

Cultural specificity in defaults

Skathi's onboarding asks for genre preference using South Asian categories first, not Western chart pop. The home feed surfaces regional artists. The beats marketplace tiers licensing in dollar bands that make sense for South Asian indie producers, not Western majors.

Designers from the community matter

Salil Timalsina designs from Nepal. That shapes both projects: the small details Western product designers wouldn't catch — the right tone, the right script choices, the right defaults — are not feature requests, they're built in.

Read the TransferNet case study or the Skathi case study for full design walkthroughs.