An ode to my friend Ruchin, and the stories that make a startup

In 2002, GlobalLogic was a fledgling startup in the middle of a pivot to becoming a services company, where it ultimately excelled. We had offices in Srinivaspuri in Delhi next to the Okhla Sabji Mandi. (Okhla vegetable market). Post 9/11, as we rebuilt the company, there was a need for bigger offices. In startups, offices are a tricky thing since you don’t know how much space to lock down and it can be a large capital outlay.?

We had zeroed in to Noida and there were 2 options. First, to take a bare shell office which was costing Rs. 11/sq ft and the second option was to take fully furnished space which was costing Rs. 30/sq ft. The first option would need us to shell out almost $1M in capital outlay, money that we didn’t have and the second option would lock us in to very high rentals with escalation on a large base for years.

Ruchin had just joined us as our head of Admin and he was heading this little project. He was always an out of the box thinker and he found a third solution. He was able to negotiate a deal with a new landlord, where we rented space at Rs. 11/sq ft and top of that, the landlord lent us $1M in cash, which we paid back with interest in equal installments over the following 5 years. This was unsecured loan directly into the company. This was a big win for us. We were able to secure a rental deal at bare shell prices, get cash into the company for build out, and only paid rent escalation at a much lower base. We lived in this building for a very long time, close to 10 years. This was an important deal for us, and gave us a huge boost in those early years.

Ruchin worked with me for a number of years helping us setup our Noida operation. He named our café Ambrosia and always wondered why the software engineers were never satisfied with the free food. :-)

Later on, he helped start Cygnus chain of hospitals (earlier called Altius) with Doctors Shuchin and Naveen. He introduced me to the company and this became my first angel investment in 2011. I have since had extended friendships and interactions with his wonderful family, and I know he is sorely missed.

Ruchin called a spade a spade, had an intuitive understanding of business and was an out of the box thinker. He was a super fun person to be around. I have many things to be grateful to him for.

RIP.