Housing co-founder Adivitya Sharma resigns, to take a vow of silence and meditate

(Left to right) Housing co-founders Adivitiya Sharma and Rahul Yadav in good times. Photo credit: Livemint.

What do India’s startup founders do – when they quit companies and dilute their equity? Apparently, they go into a silent meditation zone away from the world, to rediscover their life’s true purpose or obtain the next million dollar startup idea from the depths of infinity.

We’re not kidding.

That’s what Advitiya Sharma, co-founder of controversial startup Housing will do from next week onwards, when he is finally relieved from a company he started in 2012 with 10 other batchmates of IIT-Bombay.

Advitiya, formerly a board member at Housing, will actually isolate himself in the Gorai meditation centre near a Mumbai beach and practice the ancient meditation technique – called – Vipassana. The participant is not allowed to speak to anyone, keep a mobile phone, laptop, or even contact his family for a period of 10 days.

The only meals Adivitya will be allowed will be a light breakfast followed by a limited lunch and then tea in the evening. He will not be allowed to keep any reading material, or even a pen.

“Frankly am a bit scared. But this intense introspection is needed to see what went wrong at Housing and what I could do better in my next startup which I am planning in two to three months,” he adds.

See: This boy from terrorism-hit Jammu & Kashmir got $90 million from SoftBank for his startup

Finding startup nirvana

Adivitiya, has been meeting various entrepreneurs in the past few months to gather ideas for the next business venture, and he hopes the meditation will help him with it.

Housing is now being run by Softbank-appointed CEO Jason Kothari. Majority of the founding team has also left. Housing’s controversial CEO and co-founder Rahul Yadav was fired last year.

He has already received backing of Flipkart’s founders Sachin and Binny Bansal for his new startup in the data analytics space.

“Many people advised me to take a six month long break after this gruelling startup journey. However at 26 years of age, I can’t afford to take too many months to come back,” said Advitiya. He admitted that a lot of problems in the startup arose due to poor decision by the co-founders. He hopes to find the answers within for those decisions.

While former Housing CEO Rahul Yadav openly blames the investors for the problems at the company, Adivitya admits that he did make some mistakes. “The early part of the startup journey was a high except the last eight to nine months when we saw tough times,” he adds.