Vijeet Suman, a 33-year-old IIT Delhi alumnus from Patna, is rewriting the definition of serial entrepreneurship thousands of miles from home in Mexico. After spending a highly successful decade protecting billions in payments and fraud for major tech acquisitions, including a significant stint at Uber, Suman decided to pursue a very different life. What began as a venture into the culinary world, driven simply by a desire to find authentic Indian food, quickly evolved. In an interview with hindustantimes.com, Suman detailed his journey from the tech boardroom to launching and managing a diverse portfolio of four thriving companies.
Suman started his journey as a corporate employee after completing B.Tech in Textile Technology from IIT Delhi. Recalling the early days of his career, he shared, “I grew up in Patna and studied engineering at IIT Delhi before spending over ten years in payments and fraud prevention. My job was protecting billions of dollars a year from financial crime. Three of the four companies I worked at got acquired, including Linio by Falabella and Cornershop by Uber. I was lucky with the leaders I worked under - they taught me how to take risks properly, when to bet, and how to own the outcomes.”
Why the food business?
Suman explained, “In 2023, while still working in tech, Arpit Khurana and I opened Aroma Curry in Mexico City. Honest reason: we missed real Indian food and got tired of waiting for someone else to make it. We had zero restaurant experience, but then something unexpected happened - strangers started asking us to cater their weddings. Letting two Indian engineers handle food on the most important day of their lives was a huge leap of faith. Dozens of weddings later, it taught me a fundamental lesson: if you fix a real necessity, the market shows you the way naturally.”
At the time, he was juggling his food venture alongside his role at Uber. That all changed in 2024, when he decided to walk away from corporate life and chart a new path.
“By 2024, I left Uber - not because anything was wrong, but because I wanted a different life. Looking for balance, I opened a small yoga studio, Santulan, mostly for myself. Members asked for a pilates reformer, so we added it. Within two years, thanks to our instructors and community, it became one of the highest-rated studios in Mexico City,” Suman recalled, talking about his second business.
The IITian didn’t stop there; he went on to build software to manage his other businesses, and it became another source of income for him. “When I couldn't find decent software to manage it, I built my own. Other studio owners asked for it, and that became Klasius. Fortify came last: after ten years fighting fraud, three friends and I built a platform to tackle the exact problem I knew best, and we are already running pilots with one of Mexico’s largest e-commerce companies.”
Overcoming the immigrant grind
Running multiple businesses presented unique operational hurdles across entirely different industries. Suman recalled how every step came with its own set of unpredictable obstacles.
“Every venture brought its own chaos. At Aroma Curry, we looked busy from the outside, but delivery apps were eating our margins raw - at one point, over half our revenue came from a single app, meaning we were basically working for them until we built our own direct channels. At Santulan, I had to learn studio economics on the fly, coding Klasius at night while managing operations by day. With Fortify, the challenge was enterprise trust: getting large Mexican companies to trust a young startup founded by foreign engineers took time and proof.”
Establishing an enterprise in a completely new country brought a whole new layer of complexity. Navigating legal systems and cultural nuances as an outsider required relentless self-reliance.
Suman recounted, “Underneath all of it was building in a country where you weren't born. Every permit, contract, and negotiation was in Spanish, within a system I had to learn from zero. Anywhere in the world, when people see an outsider, some will test you. You verify every document yourself because there is no safety net - no uncle to call, no childhood friend in government. Before you build a business, the real work of an immigrant entrepreneur is building your own support system from scratch.”
Beyond the business complexities, the journey required immense personal sacrifice. Balancing demanding startup hours with family life thousands of miles away from home took a heavy emotional toll.
Looking back, the entrepreneur shared, “The personal cost was the hardest part. My son was born in 2023, the same year as Aroma Curry. Balancing late-night tech deployments and kitchen fires with diaper changes, far from home, meant constantly deciding which fire to put out first. Living across the world comes with a quiet tax: missing Sunday lunches, family festivals, and watching your parents age over video calls.”
Finding the right people to help manage such diverse operations was a long and challenging process. Ultimately, facing these struggles directly helped him build a strong foundation and a dedicated team.
“Building a team across four completely different industries - finding people who care whether the dal tastes right when you aren't standing there - took years of painful trial and error. Today, the team running these companies is my proudest achievement. We got through by refusing to lie to ourselves about the numbers and facing every problem directly. In the end, the place where I had nobody became the place where I built everything.”
Best and worst memories of the journey
Reflecting on his path, Suman shared that his fondest memory stems from a major catering event that validated his entire mission. Scaling up to serve hundreds of guests far from India led to an unforgettable moment of connection.
“The highest point? Catering our first big wedding with over 300 guests. We had never done anything at that scale and weren't sure we could pull it off. Everything went perfectly, but the moment I’ll never forget was when guests came up to tell us the food tasted ‘just like Delhi.’ We were thousands of miles from home, but in that single sentence, our whole reason for starting the restaurant came back to us.”
When it comes to setbacks, he prefers to view daily obstacles not as low points, but as an essential part of the process. For Suman, navigating ongoing challenges is simply a natural requirement of building multiple businesses.
“As for the ‘worst’ moment, I don't look at the journey that way. Every day you fail at something small and learn something new. Life has ups and downs - that isn't a flaw in the journey, that is the journey. If you're running four companies and nothing is going wrong, you're not paying attention.”
A jiju’s post. A viral surprise
Suman’s story first came to light when his brother-in-law celebrated his achievements in an X post. The post soon went viral, attracting praiseful remarks from many.
Recalling how it felt, Suman expressed, “My phone started buzzing more than usual—that's how I found out. Rahul had posted, and over a lakh people had already seen it. Messages started coming in from people I hadn't talked to since college.”
He continued, “In Indian families, we rarely praise each other face to face - we tell the world instead. So reading it, I just smiled. Though I did tease him about one thing: he wrote restaurant ‘chain.’ I messaged him: ‘One restaurant, jiju’. For now.”
How much does he earn?
While Suman refrained from disclosing his exact income, he highlighted a fundamental shift in his reality, moving from collecting a paycheck to being the one issuing them.
However, he told hindustantimes.com, “I won't share exact figures, but I'll share a harder truth: the nature of earning changes completely. In a job, your salary arrives predictably on the same date every month. In entrepreneurship, you pay yourself last. The team, the landlord, the suppliers, the taxes - everyone gets paid before you, and some months ‘your turn’ simply doesn't come,” adding, “But equity changes how you look at value. What we are building across these four companies is worth far more than any corporate salary I walked away from. I traded a comfortable number for a meaningful one.”
From Bhojpur to Mexico City:
Reflecting on his family's generational shift, Suman expressed deep appreciation for how far his journey has brought him. The contrast between his humble roots and his current achievements remains a constant source of perspective.
“My father was born in a small village in Bhojpur, Bihar - the first generation to leave the village. One generation later, his son runs four companies in Mexico City. When I think about the distance between Bhojpur and Colima Street, I don't take a single bit of it for granted.”
The extra effort
Closing out with advice for professionals currently in the corporate world, Suman emphasised the value of going above and beyond standard expectations. He noted that dedication and unseen effort eventually build the foundation for future success.
“For anyone working inside a company right now: don't expect a standard 9-to-5 schedule to take you somewhere extraordinary. Always deliver more than what's on your job description. People notice extra effort - someone is always watching, even when you think they aren't. That extra work accumulates quietly, and sooner or later, it pays off in ways you can't predict.”