Who we are?

We work with individuals and organizations to unlock creative confidence and reimagine how problems are solved. Through hands-on workshops, incubation programs, and bite-sized learning modules, we help teams move from insight to action.
At d-Van, we understand that good design isn’t just about how something looks — it’s about how it works for people and their ecosystems. That’s why everything we do is rooted in empathy and with a shared vision to effect positive social change.
At d-Van, we’re building a Social Impact Lab powered by training in Systems Thinking, Design Thinking, Futures Thinking and Policy Innovation.
We believe good design and innovation should be accessible to everyone with the courage to solve real-world challenges. Our mission is simple — to help individuals and organizations turn bold ideas into real, people and ecologically centered interventions that create lasting impact.
"All our programs are built around the 4P Framework — People, Purpose, Process, and Product  —  helping changemakers design with intention and scale ideas that matter."

Mission

d-Van is a social impact lab that partners with individuals and organizations to develop strategies, and  systems to create change for the public interest. Our mission is to contribute to the ecosystem of social entrepreneurship in India and globally  by creating training programs, and facilitating workshops that enable open, creative, and collaborative mindsets. Our curriculum is interdisciplinary in nature bringing in perspectives that focus on the value of design, innovation, and systems to build customised, and grounded interventions  that are people and ecologically centered.
We are a remote first incubator and develop experiential programs  that foreground empathy, collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity.

Our Approach

4P FRAMEWORK

  • When solving any problem - big or small, personal or otherwise, there is a key question one needs to ask - Are you treating the symptoms, or are you finding a cure? An in-depth or root-cause analysis of the problem is critical to building impactful interventions.

  • Even the fanciest solutions in the world will not work if they don’t service the human need before the business need. People i.e. your customers and users can single-handedly determine the success or failure of any solution.

  • The golden rule of innovation: Explore every possibility around you! Don’t settle when it seems you’ve run yourself out of ideas – because the brilliant ones will only come after the most obvious ideas have been exhausted.

  • The success or failure of a product or project (solution) depends on how your users interact with it? To truly innovate and design creative solutions, it is imperative to remove our blinkers and get honest feedback from the users. This requires taking your product through rigorous prototyping and testing before launching it.

MEET THE TEAM

Co-Founder and Partner | Mahak Chhajer

Mahak is Co-founder and Partner at the d-Van, where she builds at the intersection of design thinking and learning innovation. Her core strengths lie in product strategy, customer experience design, digital transformation, and building scalable, high-impact programs that combine strong business outcomes with deep user empathy. As a trained design thinking coach, she brings a structured yet creative lens to solving complex problems and enabling teams to innovate with clarity and speed.

She is also VP – Product & Strategy (India & APAC) at Emeritus, and previously worked at McKinsey & Company. Mahak holds an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business.

She believes in enabling individuals and organizations to continuously evolve in a rapidly changing world. Outside of work, she is a theatre enthusiast and enjoys stage performances.

Co-Founder and Partner | Siddharth Peter de Souza

Siddharth Peter de Souza is Co-founder and Partner at the d-Van where he explores what design can do to build inclusive, equitable and future ready organizations. His core work is in information and storytelling, legal design, organizational strategy, social impact missions and community outreach. He has worked as a design thinking trainer to build creative and critical approaches to problem solving.

Siddharth is an Assistant Professor in AI & Society and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methods, Warwick University. He is also the founder of Justice Adda, a law and design social venture in India where he works on matters related to access to justice, Siddharth has worked as a digital policy consultant with UNDP and IDLO and was previously a post-doctoral researcher at the Global Data Justice Project at Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society. He is a research associate at the African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, University of Johannesburg.

Through the d-Van he hopes to offer individuals and organizations spaces to test and create sustainable projects and impacts.