"Padhoge toh hi iss jagah se nikaloge" Maa used to say.
Dad was a farmer, and we were barely scraping by. So he started borrowing money to fend for us.
Then, as the debts piled up, he hid from the moneylenders.
"I grew up in a mud house in a village in UP. We were a family of 17 people!" Says Vikas Singh
By 20, he had graduated with an Economics degree. Still, he didn't get jobs because he had studied from a vernacular medium.
With his broken English, he only got a security guard's job with a salary of Rs 6,600.
"But I wanted to do more–I'd look at people entering the offices and wish to be one of them."
He learned English by watching Hollywood movies after work to work towards it. Finally, his seniors noticed improvement and promoted him to office coordinator.
He started paying attention to the work people were doing.
Once, he actually fixed an analyst's problem! After that, people realized he might not know the language well, but he knew work–they started consulting more often. And then, 3 years later, something absolutely crazy happened!
One of the analysts referred him for an interview with Goldman Sachs.
"I prepared for that interview for days; I even bought a suit using my savings just to appear ''smart''. And after several rounds of interviews, one more complex than the other, I cracked it! That was the moment my life changed–for good!"
Imagine that once a security guard now entering the office of Goldman Sachs as an analyst.
With time, he paid off all the debts.
Finally, his Papa said, ''Thank you, now I don't have to hide my face from moneylenders.''
He enrolled for an MBA through his office's scholarship program a few years later in Chicago.
He studied hard and networked with the right people.
After working for Goldman Sachs for 3 years, he started his fitness company at 36.
Who would have thought that a security guard would one day run a company? But that's the thing about dreams – when you believe in them, they come true!
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