Startup failure drives Indian techie to commit suicide

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India is a country where people commit suicide over poor grades in exams, cricket matches lost, or even their favorite politician getting a prison sentence.

Now that startups have caught on as an obsession in the aspiring India, another reason to die got added to that list: failure to build a successful startup.

Hyderabad-based Lucky Gupta Aggarwal inhaled nitrogen to kill himself because he failed to build a successful social networking app, reports The Times of India.

Dream of a unicorn

Lucky, 33, researched painless methods to commit suicide on the internet and found inhaling nitrogen as one.

Reportedly, he had hoped that his social networking app would become as successful as Jan Koum’s WhatsApp, which was sold to Facebook for US$19 billion.

Police seized a three-feet-long nitrogen cylinder with a pipe from Lucky’s home on Wednesday. “Lucky wrote in the suicide note that he was lucky to die in a painless way. He also wrote that he adopted the suicide method of using nitrogen as it was the easiest and painless way,” the police were quoted as saying.

The family had thought that Lucky had brought the cylinder home for an experiment.

Doctors believe that Lucky’s successful experiment at creating hypoxia with nitrogen may prove to be a trigger for others suffering from depression.

Failure not ‘so cool’ in India

About 90 percent of startups shut down within the four years, with the first 24 months being a critical period for most.

While in other markets such as the Silicon Valley, where people tom-tom about their failures and impart their learnings, in India, failure still carries a stigma.

Struggling to build a world changing business is seen as inferior to having a secure and well paying job with a stable employer, preferably the government.

Silicon Valley lauds trying, failing, and pivoting. But in India, failure still carries a stigma.

With a population of over 1.25 billion people and with over 65 percent people under 35 years of age, suicide is seen by a few as a method to end all pain and struggle of life. Failure to pass exams, being unsuccessful in love life, or failure to clear bank dues, are some of the most common reasons for suicides in India.

Maths is a killer