Rahul Vohra was just 27 when he added millions to his net worth by selling his startup to LinkedIn. However, the stress of running a successful company landed him in the hospital. The Indo-British entrepreneur has now opened up about his journey from sickness to health and to building another successful startup.
For some context
Vohra had founded Rapportive in 2009 as a browser plug-in email service. In February 2012, LinkedIn acquired the startup in a deal valued at $15 million.
However, just a few months before the deal closed, Rahul Vohra—then serving as CEO and co-founder of Rapportive—ended up in the hospital because of stress.
“I didn’t think I was stressed, but I think that’s just because when you’re stressed all the time, you don’t even notice it anymore,” he told Fortune.
Landing up in the hospital
The stress of everyday life added up until Vohra woke up at 3 am one morning, experiencing severe nausea and discomfort. He tried to ignore the pain and go about his day as usual. By lunchtime, however, the pain had become unbearable. Vohra tried to go to a pharmacy near his office but collapsed on the way due to sheer pain.
{{/usCountry}}The stress of everyday life added up until Vohra woke up at 3 am one morning, experiencing severe nausea and discomfort. He tried to ignore the pain and go about his day as usual. By lunchtime, however, the pain had become unbearable. Vohra tried to go to a pharmacy near his office but collapsed on the way due to sheer pain.
{{/usCountry}}One of his co-founders came to his rescue after he collapsed outside a McDonald’s outlet in San Francisco. He brought Vohra painkillers—and “like an idiot,” Vohra says he went straight back to the grind.
Vohra waited until the following day to seek medical attention, where doctors put him through a battery of tests. The results suggested that years of stress, coupled with a steady diet of junk food and no exercise, had taken a serious toll on his health, leaving him with gastrointestinal reflux disease.
A nurse told him that his insides appeared to belong to someone 10 to 20 years older and urged him to “re-examine” his life. The experience, followed by several weeks recovering at home with his family, forced Vohra to reconsider the kind of life he wanted alongside his ambitions as an entrepreneur.
(Also read: Bengaluru founder says 4 months in ICU changed his perspective on work)
Vohra spent a week in hospital, where he reflected on what it meant to build a company and how he wanted to go about doing it. That period ultimately shaped his approach to building his next company, which went on to be acquired by Grammarly for $825 million.
Finding work-life balance
“I personally find it sad and dismaying when founders in their 20s…[are] running themselves into the ground, often much worse than what I did,” Vohra said. “They’re doing what I did plus stupid hours, and they’re wearing that as a badge of honor. I hope that when people read this, that they see that there is another path.”
For Vohra, the “other path” meant disconnecting from work after a week in the hospital and spending time with his family.
However, the most important change came when he began to practice transcendental meditation under the guidance of Laurent Valosek, a wellness coach and CEO of executive coaching firm Peak Leadership Institute.
Vohra took up transcendental meditation in the Raj tradition of India, which involves personalised, one-on-one instruction in the practice and its associated mantra. Their initial training involved sessions lasting several hours over a period of days. Even after years of practising, they continue to meet face-to-face for meditation sessions every two or three months.
(Also read: ‘Hustle culture comes at a cost’: 25-year-old techie ends up in hospital, blames poor lifestyle)
How his lifestyle changed
The 42-year-old entrepreneur today begins every morning with a 20-minute meditation session. He says that doing so allows him to go about his day with a much “calmer” and “clearer” headspace
“When I did finally get back into work, all of the games that the VCs were playing…that were really getting to me, just suddenly didn’t faze me at all,” Vohra says.
“I had this new source of grit and resilience. I just straight-up called VCs who were BS-ing me out on their BS, and refused to engage with them because I had this new found source of strength, which was simply this gratitude for being alive.”
Vohra sold his second company, Superhuman, to Grammarly for $825 million in 2025. This time, there were no hospital visits.
His new lifestyle has time carved out for meditation as well as working out. He has also revamped his diet after consulting dieticians and nutritionists.
“I think just being older and wiser, having more perspective, having an exercise practice, having a meditation practice, eating way better,” Vohra says. “There was no existential dread. We weren’t running out of money. We were growing faster than ever. I could have raised more money. Selling the company was really more about: Are we going to achieve our mission faster together if we do this?”