From Zero
to Crores.
Bootstrapped.

From Kurukshetra to Code —
A Boy Who Never Stopped Building.

I grew up in Kurukshetra, Haryana — a city that holds ancient stories of war, wisdom, and resilience. My family was in wholesale confectionery. My father built his livelihood through relationships, bulk orders, and the quiet satisfaction of watching something he created reach thousands of hands. I watched all of it. I absorbed more than I ever realised at the time.

After 12th, I enrolled in a B.Tech in Computer Science. I was good with systems — understanding how things connect, how processes compound, how small decisions made early echo loudly later. But in my final year, personal circumstances forced a decision I never planned for. I had to drop out. No degree. No clear path. No safety net.

What I did have — and this turned out to be everything — was the ability to adapt without losing ambition.

The Software Years —
Where Discipline Was Born.

Most people skip this part of my story. Before Meraki, before corporate gifting, before everything — I was a software tester and web developer at an IT company in Delhi.

I had dropped out of college but I had not dropped out of ambition. I taught myself. I applied. I got in. For the next few years I worked in the structured world of software — testing builds, writing frontend code, sitting in standups, learning what it means to be accountable to a process and a deadline and a client's expectations.

It sounds like the opposite of entrepreneurship. It was actually the foundation of it.

The discipline I built in those rooms — meeting deadlines, thinking in systems, understanding what clients actually need versus what they say they want — became the invisible backbone of everything I built later. But something kept gnawing at me. A feeling that I wasn't building anything of my own. That the code I was writing wasn't mine. That there was a different kind of work waiting — messier, riskier, and far more alive.

So I left. Not with a plan. With a direction.

The Uber Chapter —
The Best MBA I Never Got.

I didn't leave the IT company to start a business. I left because I wanted to earn more and move faster. The finances for studying abroad weren't there yet. So I did what most ambitious people don't have the humility to do — I took a step sideways instead of backwards.

I took a loan, bought a car, and became an Uber driver in Delhi.

Let me be honest about what that felt like. I had professional IT experience. I was now driving strangers around a city at 5am. There was no story arc I could point to. There was just the choice: keep moving, or stop.

I kept moving.

For nearly two years, I drove. And here is what I discovered: the front seat of a car is one of the most honest places in the world. People talk. Really talk. Founders venting about investors. HR managers worried about retention. Sales directors explaining entire industries in fifteen minutes because there is nothing else to do in traffic. I was getting an education I could not have paid for. Every conversation was a module. Every passenger was a professor.

Stuck in Delhi Traffic —
A Conversation That Built a Company.

He was a businessman in corporate gifting. I had never heard of the industry before. As he explained it — the custom merchandise, the branded hampers, the welcome kits, the festive gifting, the enterprise clients — something in me didn't just find it interesting. Something in me recognised it.

This was a world where creativity met commerce. Where you made something physical that carried a company's identity. Where the quality of what you produced was felt in someone's hands, on their desk, at their doorstep on the morning of Diwali.

I asked him directly: "Can I join your team in sales?"

He said yes.

That conversation — stuck in Delhi traffic, front seat of my car, no business plan in sight — became the first chapter of Meraki Merchandise.

Learning the Trade Nobody Teaches.

I joined as a Sales Associate — the youngest in the room and the most eager. No formal training. No gifting background. What I had was software discipline, a hunger to learn, and a genuine love for making things. Customised products specifically. There is something deeply satisfying about taking a blank canvas and turning it into something that carries a company's identity.

My first client was Penguin Random House India. We made custom passport holders, mugs, and coasters — completely from scratch. I remember every product from that order. I still feel the same excitement today when a new brief lands.

From Penguin, the portfolio grew. DLF Mall. Corning Glass. Select City Mall. A growing roster of MNCs across Delhi. I climbed from Sales Associate to Sales Head — building relationships, understanding what corporate buyers actually need (not what they think they need), and developing a standard of quality that I refused to compromise on.

Then the company began winding down its Delhi operations. Another crossroads. This time, I didn't wait for someone else to write the next chapter.

Zero to Crores —
Building Meraki from Nothing.

I started Meraki Merchandise in 2019 with no office, no funding, no staff, and no safety net. Just a phone, a laptop, a network of trusted suppliers built over five years, and a very clear picture of what corporate clients actually want.

My first client as a founder was McKinsey & Company.

Let that land for a moment. No office. No team. No funding. No investor deck. First client as a solo founder: McKinsey & Company — one of the most demanding, detail-oriented organisations on earth.

I am not sharing this to impress anyone. I am sharing it because it tells you something important about what this business was built on. Not capital. Not connections. Not luck. It was built on trust — the kind of trust that takes five years of showing up, delivering on time, and never cutting corners to earn.

From McKinsey, Meraki grew. Quietly, steadily, order by order. No investor rounds. No venture funding. No accelerators. Pure bootstrap — from zero to crores in revenue, built on the oldest principle in business: do great work, be accountable, and people will keep coming back.