Following my Heart got me broken — Passion doesn’t pay you, a fulfilling work of value does.

and moving to a smaller town in Kochi, Kerala, India.

Musing of a small town girl wanting to startup!

I had admit I had gone on the hide the 18 months figuring how to convert my passion for helping entrepreneurs who strive to make a difference with resources mainly capital, access to network and hire potential talent, and also figure out how to pay my bills doing that. Sometimes following your passion doesn’t get you paid, but luckily I didn’t die of hunger, thanks to my family who were gracious to cover my expenses in need. I just did what I could, train, consult, do the excel sheets, just to get a roof and food on the table, which is pretty much I had asked for taking this path December of 2014 and moved to Kochi.

I moved to Kochi, a less known, tier I city, a smaller startup ecosystem compared to Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai or my previous work place at IITM Research Park, Chennai for that matter. My family and close friends kept asking me why Kochi? why not Bangalore where is the big hub. Well, I feel being the Big fish in the small pond & own the pond more appealing than a small shark in a big ocean, so choosing a place close to home and heart was absolute necessity for me. I decided, first time I visited the city in August 2012, I just fell in love, with the monsoons and people around, so my heart knew right away, watching the Marine Drive overlooking the Blue waters of Arabian Sea, something told me Kochi is going to be more than a tourist or an official visit, it could become Home someday.

I’m glad It happend, 3 years later, I moved in December 2014 and found a place on my own to make it my first home. Chosing a small town like Kochi also meant saying No to 3–4 big pay offers to join other firms, high growth startups, or run accelerator in a big cities, manage community in Bangalore, Chennai, a lot of them. For the first time, I did feel bad to say No to them, but my heart took over my brains, and didn’t let me to take one.

In my opinion, I felt Bangalore is so much grown big and diverse, there is hardly any part of the startup journey , I could carve out a niche and do it to my best, there are probably 10 other folks doing what I doing anyways. I often visit Bangalore to keep up with the network on what’s new happening in town, I get lost in the crowd and the traffic congestion, long time lost on road to get around 10 kms radius kills my spirit. So I chose to make the operations out of Home in Kochi or Coimbatore would have been preferable, but I like the small distance commute from Home which can give me the independence and necessity to work it on my home as a motivator to make it.

The last 18 months I had been in town, I had tinkered doing many startup stuff from co-founding and failing a hardware startup idea thereby killing a long last friend and a co-founder, consulting for business development and modelling assignments for a handful of old portfolio startups, fund raising for a couple of new ones in volunteering sessions, counselling a employee exit for a tech engineer when the founder didn’t settle his fair share, financial modelling for a couple of startups, amidst getting knocked by life and family in general on continuous questions what the fcuk I am doing with my life a lot of times, the last 18 months in Kochi had been roller coaster, the hardest I had suffered the most in my 31 years of existence, also the most learning period of an interesting phase so far. Throughout the time, I kept telling myself just do what you love, manage to cover for the roof and food, make the work good, money will find its way. By now, I know what’s like to have less than Rs. 100 in hand, hustling to pay next month’s rent, borrowing from Home, living within means, scrapping where it to be, travelling in second class train fare, hoping one day it will turn out to be good. Damn, it feels finally nice to say, it does turn out for the best. When you keep at the task, opportunities do open and in a cliche’s Paulo Coelho words,” Universe does listen to your inner heart says and makes you feel inclusive”. Thank god it did.

I did have my moments of happiness watching it beautifully rain during monsoons, walking my neighbourhood, Festivities and grandeur of the places here, meeting amazing local entrepreneurs who would become my support network and Me theirs, a place to call home and mostly importantly a healing of a broken heart from a complicated personal relationship which always kept me in tears, hurting like hell & broke me to pieces, shook my core and tore my soul apart, words can’ describe what I have been through. It was not easy, its was painful, I just didn’t get up from bed for a lot of days, and didn’t feel like I want to live anymore or life had any meaning. But support from family helped, with a lot of help and support of amazing good friends, a strong faith in a high power that If I’m breathing and living to this day, it’s got to mean something big and better. So, after a long long hibernation, I started to put back together and feelt like I can do this, this will define will I make it or not and my old strength started coming back. Life moves on, but it took me a while to get back to myself to realize and get back to normal.

Ok, I know what you are thinking, this post is intended to be my full life history, but pretty close sum up of last 18 months of startup struggle, finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. I wanted to remember this struggle as a part of me I never wanted to forget and serve this as a life lesson and a back ground of my founding story of my next venture, fundcloud.in, more on that in the next post, why I founded Fundcloud initiative..