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🧠 Think Different

Toastmasters Pathways – Level 1, Project 3: Body Language and Vocal Variety

Objective: Use body language and vocal variety to enhance your speech delivery and connect with the audience.

“There are infinite possibilities in front of you,”
said the chief guest at my graduation.

At 22, I looked at my options... and laughed.

I had just four:

  • Option One
    Do nothing.
    Float in the corporate sea, pretend to like meetings, and wait 40 years for a gold-plated retirement mug.

  • Option Two
    Higher studies haha, my mind said you cannot. I wallet said you cannot afford either.

  • Option Three
    Govt jobs. Application, reservation, corruption, not for a rebel soul like me.

  • So I picked the fourth: Entrepreneurship.

☕ Hyderabad, 2012​

I was in an auto, charged up with an idea.

“Let’s sell men’s products online,” I told my colleague.

He replied, “Bro, we’ll crush it.”

He did.
My wallet.

In the name of market research, he bought clothes — for himself.
Every follow-up was in a café.
Every café came with ₹280 coffee and ₹0 execution.

Eventually, I developed a condition: coffee allergy.

👨‍💻 Then came consulting…​

I helped small businesses go digital.
Thought we’d grow rich together.

But 90% of small businesses fail —
and I had a gift for picking the exact 90%.

One client paid me with gifts.
Another gave me blessings.
After a few months, I didn’t have clients.
I had unpaid therapy sessions.

💡 Enter my ₹0 startup​

I opened a Zoom account and helped professionals solve tech issues on weekends.
Sounds premium? It was basically online tuition with a startup pitch.

  • Five years.
  • Six hundred weekends.
  • One man.

Yay, I tasted success.

🤖 Then, AI walked in​

It didn’t knock.
It barged in, ate my business, and left me staring at the ceiling at 2AM.

  • Slide decks? Gone.
  • Troubleshooting? Gone.
  • Tech help? Replaced by a bot that never sleeps or needs chai.

I didn’t just lose clients.
I lost purpose.

🙃 Then came the “support”​

  • Family checked my horoscope to see why my startup failed.
  • Grandma judged my pitch: “Good idea... maybe after marriage.”
  • Friends said, “Don’t share your failures. What will others think?”

So I smiled in public.
And cried into my invoices.

They cheered — as long as I didn’t dream too loud.

💔 They said: Be practical​

But this is what practicality looks like:

  • Missing weddings.
  • Skipping weekends.
  • Fighting doubt with nothing but Google Docs and gut feel.

No one sees the invisible tax you pay for dreaming differently —
the loneliness, the long hours, the emotional EMIs.

🔧 But we still build​

We fix real problems.
Hyperlocal problems.
The kind that never make headlines, but actually make lives easier.

💭 And what keeps us going?​

Entrepreneurship is like taking moonshots. If you succeed, you will make a little fortune and change the economic fate of few families by providing them jobs. Thats what keeps me moonlighting, fighting the odds and showing up.

Thank you.

Fun face: This speech took 7:40s, I had to repeat the speech.