Why Did I Leave Banking?

In India, competition and the pressure to succeed are as much a part of your life as the air around you. Success is linear, clearly defined by which engineering, medical or management school you get into, which company you get a job with and how quickly you rise through the ranks.

When you grow up in such an environment, that is how you get conditioned to think. And that is why when I got into IIM Ahmedabad, the mecca of management education, I thought I had already succeeded in life. (I will be honest; it is still one of my proudest achievements!)

But what it eventually led to, was a path that I seemed to just be uncontrollably rolling into rather than carefully traversing myself. Let me share a small story to better illustrate that.

I was told to aim for getting a job placement on the first day of the recruitment week. Only the best companies scouting for the best talent. The best as it were, constituted of only investment banks and top consultancies. So, with the sole aim of being the best and getting selected by the best, I poured all my energies into the interviews I had on first day and there I was, happily marching off with an offer from an Investment Bank. Not much consideration was given to how monumental this decision was and if it was really the career I wanted to pursue. I just flowed with the flow.

Honestly, what came next was nothing short of amazing. From the dimly lit dormitories, tense classrooms and inedible canteen food to the flashy, high energy trading floor of Merrill Lynch overlooking the glitzy Hong Kong skyline, I felt like a child who had slept off on a rickety, snail-paced giant wheel and woken up on an adrenaline pumping, faster-than-light roller coaster. Yes, the work was demanding, but it came with lunches at Four Seasons, dinners at the Ritz and business class travels around the world. The fat salary cheques at the age of 23 didn’t hurt either! It was a head rush for sure.  

I remember someone telling me in my early days- “In banking you slog unhappily for 364 days so that you can be happy on the 365th (bonus day).” Sour grapes I thought and brushed it off. I was a high-flying banker, working at a coveted investment bank, living a glamorous life. Nothing could be better!

But I was wrong. As I plunged myself deeper and deeper into the waters, I found myself struggling more and more to stay afloat. Something was amiss. I was not enjoying what I was doing and I felt no sense of purpose. The financial crisis didn’t help either but I knew the problem was deeper than that.

Innumerable times I wanted to let go. But I continued. More, because I felt I had to justify the stellar MBA degree I had. Someone with my credentials couldn’t be seen doing anything different, even if that meant my life spiralling out of control. At one point I even felt if the degree was more of a curse than a boon. It was stopping me from taking risks and breaking out of conventional moulds!

Grudgingly, I carried on and so did the resentment.

Somewhere between doing 80 hours a week and taking work trips disguised as family vacations, I finally decided to call it quits. It wasn’t just something that snapped one day but the constant toll of 3am panic wake ups, palpitation inducing red blinks of the blackberry and work that seemed as purposeless as it was endless.

I knew that it had to be a clean strike. I needed time to think freely. I understood ‘purposeless’ clearly by now but then what was ‘purpose’?  

In the next few months, I opened myself to new experiences, met a lot of interesting people, listened to a lot of stories. Some stories resonated, some didn’t. Some paths looked promising, some didn’t.

Somewhere down that road, the “conditioning”, reared its ugly head again. When people asked what I was doing, I felt a tinge of embarrassment in saying that I had left banking to explore new avenues. “Is she thinking I failed?” “Does he think I lost my job?” These questions would hound me at times.  Maybe no one really cared but I found myself giving unasked-for explanations. Maybe it was for me.

But one thing I was sure of was that I would not let this itch to be the best control me again. I wasn’t the naïve and clueless 21-year-old who joined business school with big dreams but little self-awareness. I was older, mature, armed with substantial real-world experience and a clear desire to not lead a siloed, purposeless life. But the question remained- what shall I do next?

Roald Dahl once said- “Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." With that as my motto, I kept at it and one fortuitous day I met someone from Ashoka.

Now, Ashoka is the largest network of social entrepreneurs globally and at that time I had not even heard of it. Frankly, I knew nothing about the social sector. My idea of it was primarily direct service oriented- building a school or a hospital, helping the aged, providing relief during natural disasters and so on. Since I was on an open journey of discovery, I thought to myself, why not learn more?

I was all for new experiences but this was a different one for sure. I felt like the same 23-year-old who was entering a world unknown to her. But as I spent more time, I was literally blown away. And the main reason was the opportunity I had of working closely with social entrepreneurs. These were extraordinary people who were driving social and environmental change through path-breaking, innovative ideas and solutions. People who were, in equal measure, brilliant, innovative, resilient, determined and extremely courageous.

And by no means was this direct service. This was disrupting socio-economic systems, building new and innovative models for change, creating movements, and generating multi-fold impact. Imagine training field mice to detect land mines in Africa or manufacturing affordable cataract lenses that disrupted the market, enabling blindness prevention surgeries in more than 30 million people worldwide. Even reading about the work of these innovators made my eyes light up. Imagine getting the opportunity to work with them!

At that point I knew that there was no turning back and I started thinking how best I could support their work. In my numerous interactions, I realized that one of the biggest hurdles social entrepreneurs face in scaling their impact is funding. So, I started focusing on supporting them in raising investments- a welcome shift from Corporate to Social Finance 😊. And, it seemed like a good marriage where I could use the skills from my past life while working in an inspiring, purpose-driven environment. It has been over 3 years now and if I just have to sum it all up in 3 words, all I can say is- “I love it!”

So now when someone asks me why I left banking, I just smile and say- “Because I wanted to find what was best for ME”.