A startup founder has sparked a discussion on unconventional career paths after sharing how meeting a former grocery shop owner in Himachal Pradesh changed his perspective on success.
Harshil Tomar, founder of Dream Launch Studios, shared on X that he met a man who went from running a kirana store to building a business generating around $700,000 (approximately ₹6 crore) in annual recurring revenue (ARR) with a team of just 2 people. "I met a guy in Dharamshala who went from running a kirana shop to building a $700k ARR empire with a 2 people team," he wrote.
The founder said that growing up in a city often limits people's understanding of career opportunities to conventional professions such as technology, marketing, sales or human resources. He said many are taught to choose one of these paths and build their careers within those boundaries.
"Growing up in a city teaches you a narrow menu of careers. Tech, marketing, sales, HR. You pick one and build inside its boundaries," he wrote.
{{/usCountry}}"Growing up in a city teaches you a narrow menu of careers. Tech, marketing, sales, HR. You pick one and build inside its boundaries," he wrote.
{{/usCountry}}Describing his experience in Dharamshala, Tomar said that the former shopkeeper was not the only person who broadened his perspective during the trip. He recalled meeting several people who had built highly specialised businesses.
The founder shared that he also met someone running a business that helps people navigate international visa processes, a niche industry whose day-to-day operations he admitted he had never fully understood.
Another individual had left an MNC job to focus on quantitative trading and built a personal simulation engine using Anthropic's AI assistant Claude, not as a product to sell, but solely to improve his own trading strategies. Tomar said that the trader had "more clarity about his one narrow thing than most founders I know have about their entire company."
Reflecting on the experience, he wrote that reading about niche businesses online was very different from meeting the people behind them. "I'd read about niche businesses like this before. Reading about it and sitting across a table from someone living it are two completely different experiences," he said.
Tomar concluded by saying such interactions reshape one's understanding of what is possible. "You don't know what's actually possible until you're surrounded by people who've already proven the boundaries you grew up believing in were never real to begin with," he said.
Social media reactions
The post struck a chord with many users, who echoed Tomar's views on leverage and unconventional entrepreneurship.
"The 2 person part is the whole story. Nobody's city career menu tells you a kirana shop owner can out-earn an entire department with the right leverage. Sitting across from someone living it hits different than reading about it," one user wrote.
Another simply commented, "GOAT doing GOAT things."