I am 28 years old. At 18, I founded One Good, which became one of India’s leading plant-based dairy companies. One Good raised 2mn USD from leading investors, scaled to 50 employees, and ultimately was acquired in 2023, when I was 26. I was featured on Forbes 30 under 30 (twice, once in the Asia list and once in India), and have spoken at several TedXs.

Building a category-leading startup, raising millions from investors, scaling, acquiring other companies, and ultimately selling my company – all in my early twenties – taught me how to write, speak, negotiate, have difficult conversations and communicate my way to a high win-rate.

I want to share these learnings. I founded Get Goating to teach the skills that I have learned.

I posted all the highlights above, here’s the full story below-

I’ve always been ambitious, every since I was a kid. In 2011, my family started seriously introspecting about how much harm humanity causes to animals. We turned vegan, and since then, life took a whole new direction.

I did well academically in school, read a lot of books. Things were going well, until I finished 10th and joined IIT JEE coaching. It was the first time I was surrounded by people who were intimidatingly smart. I was completely lost, and struggled with classes. I had so much self-doubt and struggled to make sense of the world.

At this time, I founded SARV, a grassroots nonprofit conducting animal rights awareness campaigns all over India. I spoke at schools, colleges, on the streets, at conferences – at age 16 onwards. I overcame stage-fear. I had to – I believed in this cause so deeply that my stage fear felt very small in comparison. I spoke on hundreds of stages and won several awards for my work.

When I turned 18, I started thinking seriously about how I could turn my passion into a career. I founded Goodmylk (which later became One Good), a company making plant-based dairy products. This was also when I joined an undergrad engineering course. For a while, I tried to make both of these work. My mother made plant-based dairy products in our home kitchen, and I delivered them to our customers early in the morning before college, came home after and picked up the second set of deliveries for the day and completed them in the evening.

This worked for some time, but there was a lot of stress. Bengaluru traffic is not forgiving. The dust, pollution, potholes, long hours sitting on my bike – all started taking a toll on my health.

There were some positives – I was invited to speak at a TedX!

Prompted by my nonprofit and startup work, I applied, and was accepted into the University Innovation Fellows program at Stanford University’s D’school. This was transformational for me. I was the first person from my family to visit the USA. Spending about a week at the Stanford campus and listening to some of the brightest minds changed me – I realised engineering wasn’t for me.

I wanted to build Goodmylk to its fullest potential. I didn’t have to wait long. We raised our USD 400k in seed, I dropped out of college, and it was off to the races.

Building the company was a 8 year journey with very high-highs and rock-bottom lows. When One Good was acquired, I felt like I had run a million kilometers. My body and mind were permanently altered.

Today, I want to take a calmer approach to venture building – less angst, going at my own pace, risking my own capital.  My first stint very often lead me to staring into an abyss, the depths of which often overcame my early 20s mind. Hopefully my new ones let me stare at the skies above more.

I read this somewhere, loved it, and am striving to be more like this – Body of an athlete. Mind of a businessman. Soul of an artist.