Aparna took the severance quietly.
No LinkedIn post. No farewell email. Just a calm exit after seven years in a role she had outgrown.
What came next wasn’t glamorous — she worked out of her guest bedroom, redesigned her own website three times, pitched strangers over email, and stretched every rupee she had into runway for her bootstrapped edtech idea.
In month four, she nearly quit.
In month five, a university signed up.
By month twelve, she was hiring her first employee.
At dinner one evening, a friend asked,
“What was your fallback if this didn’t work?”
She paused, thought for a moment, and said,
“There wasn’t one.”
They laughed. She smiled. But she meant it.