From Finance to Founding: My Startup Journey

Startups, man, they’re like roller coasters, full of crazy highs, terrifying drops and unexpected twists. And my journey? Oh, it’s been a wild one! From finance to fitness to fintech, I’ve seen it all. So, let me take you through my story, no boring boardroom talks, just the real deal.

I graduated from IIT Kharagpur and was ready to take on the world in finance. Like most IITians who want to pursue finance, I had two main career options, quant jobs in finance or front-end banking. I picked the latter because I was always intrigued by understanding how businesses actually work. That’s how I landed a gig at Ambit Corporate Finance in the M&A advisory team. From there, as per very standard career progression, I joined Everstone Capital, a $6 billion private equity fund. Sounds fancy, right? Well, the work was intense 14 to 15-hours in a day, many times on weekends too. While I was enjoying in deep-diving into business operations, after a while, I started wondering: Should I be putting in all this effort to build something of my own, as this is the golden era for India to build businesses.

My elder brother had also tried (and some successful and some partially failed at) multiple startups, but the way he talked about it, the learnings, the excitement, I was hooked. That was my sign. I quit my cushy finance job and jumped headfirst into the startup world. I didn’t have a business plan, but I had curiosity, drive, and that itch to build something of my own.

It wasn’t an easy decision, but it felt right. I was ready to trade comfort for chaos, routine for risk. That was my leap of faith. The stories, the scrappiness, even the chaos—everything about startups just clicked with me.

And thankfully, I wasn’t alone, I teamed up with my IIT batchmate Sharad and our tech genius Rohan, people who shared that same hunger and craziness. But here’s the kicker, our first idea had nothing to do with manufacturing. Nope, we wanted to solve a completely different problem: fitness accessibility.

See, while working those crazy finance hours, we noticed that everyone around me was constantly cribbing about fitness. “No good gyms nearby, no time to work out,” blah blah. That got us thinking why not create a platform that consolidates all these smaller, lesser-known fitness centers and makes them more accessible? Kind of like what OYO did for budget hotels. So, we got to work. We were pumped, convinced we had struck gold. We met gym owners, pitched the idea, and signed up a few. But guess what? The gyms weren’t
really interested in software, they wanted more business. Luckily, one of our fitness center owners also had a small manufacturing unit in Vasai, Mumbai. He said he would like to explore a similar software to run his manufacturing, and he would be willing to pay for it too.

That was our lightbulb moment. The problem wasn’t just fitness, it was digitization across industries. And just like that, our focus shifted. We realized that India’s SME manufacturing sector was way behind in tech adoption. Most factories still relied on manual processes, outdated records, and gut feelings instead of data- driven decisions. That’s how TranZact was born, a platform designed to bring these businesses into the digital age.