Spoke to my old CA of Exambazaar today. He was more like our team than a CA for us. He brainstormed and hustled for our business alongside us. He went to Kota with us, wrestled with the GST department, spoke to coaching owners, and what not.
He's moved on. He is now building AI products for CAs. We spoke about product building and ended up talking about Exambazaar.
I was reminded of how great a product we had built. We had everything going our way - great business model, profitability from Day 1, growing revenue and a great team. We had recurring B2B customers, happy clients and it was all legit - no inflation, no shady ARR calculations, no manipulations with ad spends. Just an above-board hard-earned business. We had 5,00,000 organic visitors on our website every month, something that startup founders would kill for. And we let it all slide away.
The deep melancholy of leaving Exambazaar has forever settled in me. It's a part of me - the way grief resides in you even when you're 'over it' in your day-to-day. It lives in the pit of my stomach. And I have a gnawing feeling -
There will never come a day when I feel happy about moving on from it.
A part of me died on 30 Apr 2021.
What I never fully realised was that when I left Exambazaar, a part of life of 'our universe' died too. Our first employees - Ayush and Lovish, they were like family to us. It broke their hearts. Rohit, our CA, speaks about Exambazaar with such sadness.
I miss EB. I don't think I have said that out loud for years. Or even dared to admit it.
I have always said and believed that those 5 years in Jaipur were a blackhole in my life. But I have never been as passionate or dedicated to something else as I was to EB. I never learnt as much. Working for EB brought me genuine happiness. And what's funny is - it wasn't just me. My employees, Rohit - all felt that way. It was such honest, real work that it stayed with all of us. Even glancing at the Bhamashah building on the way brings a wave of nostalgia.
There are very few people to whom I would speak about EB anymore. I don't even talk about it when I tell people about myself. It's painful. But whenever I do speak with them - I see my joy and the sadness reflected in them.
They say you don't get to choose your family. But sometimes, you build it. And EB will remain my chosen family forever.
