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Why route Mobile, a cloud communications platform provider started with an investment of $2,000 in 2004, has emerged as a darling of investors

- Manu Balachandran

A second-hand computer. That’s all it took to turn around Rajdip Gupta’s fortunes.

It all began sometime in late 2003, when Gupta, a bespectacled software developer, returned to India to start something of his own, after spending a few years in the UK. Gupta was tired of being an employee, often finding himself at odds with his seniors at the workplace. To be taken seriously, his mentor told him, he had to become his own boss and not remain an employee.

But quitting a well-placed job to start something of his own wasn’t going to be easy, especially since he came from a middle-class family where money was important. So even as he began drawing up plans for his entrepreneurial venture, he also began freelancing, doing odd jobs developing software to bring in extra income.

“I did some consulting work with one of the top fashion designers in India today,” Mumbai-based Gupta told Forbes India over a Zoom call. “I will not take the person’s name. He didn't pay me, and instead said I could take a computer that he wasn’t using that was lying in a corner.” As barter payment, Gupta picked up that computer, with 4 MB RAM on an Intel 486 processor with 16 GB of hard disk, for ₹6,500. To put the specifications in perspective, most smartphones today boast over 4 GB of RAM, 10 times that of Gupta’s second-hand computer, and some 64 GB of space.

“That's luck,” says Gupta, who didn’t have a computer then. “I took the computer, and I built a whole group.”