What is Kyoorius?
Kyoorius is India’s most significant platform for the creative community — its design conference, magazine, awards programme, and digital publication together shaped how India’s designers, advertisers, and visual communicators find each other, celebrate each other, and hold each other to a standard since 2006 till date.
How it began
Kyoorius didn’t begin as a brief. Kay co-conceived Designyatra in 2006 with Rajesh Kejriwal of Transasia Fine Papers — a design conference for India’s creative community at a time when no such platform existed — as a means to build a creative community and also to market Kyoorius Papers. From that first edition grew an entire IP: a print magazine, a digital platform, a major awards programme, and a series of offshoots that together have become a significant gathering point for India’s design community.
Over the next 12 years, Kay helped build Kyoorius from the ground up in various capacities — as consultant, creative director and editor-in-chief. Anusha joined Kyoorius in 2014 as Associate Editor, contributing across the magazine, awards, and conference until 2018.
The conference
Designyatra is a three-day annual gathering at Grand Hyatt Goa — India’s biggest anti-disciplinary design conference, drawing over 1,100 designers, architects, typographers, animators, and creative professionals every year. Speakers have included some of the most respected names in global design. The atmosphere is less of an industry event, more of a creative pilgrimage.
Kay curated & directed all editions of Designyatra from 2006-2018 including the 12th and 13th editions in 2017 and 2018 where Fish Do It had end-to-end ownership across programming and curation, creative and design direction, event branding, sponsor activations, registration UX and backend.
The magazine
When it was started, Kyoorius Magazine was the only publication in India pursuing serious editorial content in the visual communications and visual culture space. Not a trade journal, not a trends roundup — a magazine with a genuine point of view. Curious without being judgmental. Critical without being cynical.
Across all 29 bimonthly editions, Kay served as Editor-in-Chief, curating, creating content, directing design, and overseeing production. From 2014-15, Anusha worked as Associate Editor across 9 issues alongside editor Amishi and a team of freelance writers, managing, writing, and overseeing production of around 180 website articles over the duration of 1.5 years. She also edited and produced the content for the final issue of Kyoorius (Magazine #29).
The wind-down.
In 2017, we wound down the Kyoorius magazine as it had outlived its purpose. The content landscape had shifted irreversibly. Brand content, SEO writing, and social media had crowded the editorial space. Rebuilding for a short-form, social-first world would have required a different machinery with uncertain returns. By then, Kyoorius was already known through Designyatra, the Awards and Zee Melt. The magazine had done its job.
By 2018, every system and format through which Kyoorius wanted to engage with India’s creative community had been built, tested, and was running well. The machine could run itself — which is its own kind of achievement. Fishdoit’s involvement wound down naturally, by mutual agreement.
In 2026 though, we’ve rekindled it by redesigning the Kyoorius Awards Night show packaging and design and the launch of the Kyoorius Marketing Awards. A story for another time though…
Role: Creative Direction, Event Curation, Programming, Promotion & Design, Editorial Content & Design
Timeline: 2006–2018, 2026 —