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The startup world can really make you feel like struggling is a personal failure. like if you were just smarter, more skilled, better at ‘stakeholder management’, more resilient, you’d be fine. you wouldn’t be exhausted. you wouldn’t be scared. you wouldn’t be wondering if any of this is worth it.
but the data is grim, and it’s been grim for a long time. startup operators experience depression, anxiety, and burnout at rates significantly higher than the general population. and most of them suffer in silence we work at warp speed and anything that looks like it might slow us down is simply not acceptable.
if you’re in a dark place right now, or know someone who is, please reach out:
iCall (India): 9152987821, free, confidential counselling
Vandrevala Foundation: 1860-2662-345, 24/7, free
iMind: 040-2340-0400, mental health helpline
NIMHANS: 080-46110007
International: findahelpline.com to locate resources by country
you are not weak for struggling. you are human. and there are people who want to help.
Transcript
24 year old ML engineer from a small village sent his roommate a WhatsApp message that he tried to take his own life. His name was Nicholson Manchi. He worked at Crutrim, and his story is not an outlier. Rest of the world published one of the most devastating investigations into the Indian tech industry last month, and the startup ecosystem has been eerily quiet about it. Nikhil Somanshi was a star student. IISc graduate landed a job at Kruthrim, Bhavesh Agarwal's billion dollar AI startup. His village put up banners to celebrate. His salary was 10 times what his family was earning from farming. He sent money back from his first paycheck, and his parents built a small temple in gratitude. Within months, his colleagues were being fired or moved. His workload exploded, and his manager was reportedly verbally abusive and worked remotely from The US, while the entire team was in Bangalore. An anonymous colleague described the environment as traumatic, especially for freshers. A former employee who worked with the same manager said they resigned without another job because they were having suicidal thoughts. At a different Bhavesh Agarwal company, Ola Electric, a 38 year old engineer wrote a 28 page note blaming his seniors for harassment and withholding his salary. He consumed poison, and he died. This is systemic picture. Entry level IT salaries in India have risen less than 10% in fifteen years. Cost of education, food, and housing, exponentially higher. TCS cut 20,000 jobs. Tier up cut 6,000 in 2025. The number of engineering graduates keeps rising and the number of jobs keep falling. AI is accelerating that. Take ninety hour work weeks, extended hours across time zones, isolation, and underneath it all, a massive unspoken anxiety that your entire career path might not exist in three years. Every time a start up announces an AI transformation, there are real people on the other side of the press release. People who relocated to cities where they don't speak the language. People whose families best temples when they got the job. People who are 24 years old and feel trapped between disappointing their village and surviving their workplace. The startup ecosystem celebrates founders. I think we should also try to protect the people who build what the founders imagine. If your culture is burning through people at this rate, your AI good map is the least of your problems. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out. I've put a lot of resources in the caption.
