There was a time when I was at rank 50/50 in my college. I barely got in because there was a space opened up when someone moved away and not because I had the merit score.

I joined the Automobile Engineering division. This was in the year of 1997. I was the one who barely made it. Everyone in the class seemed sharper, smarter and effortlessly confident. While everyone was competing, I was just trying to get noticed. They spoke the language of engineering fluently, while I felt like I was constantly decoding an alien script. I kept my head down, avoided attention and focused on one thing alone, i.e. survival. I just wanted to stay behind and somehow finish this.

And during my first year, I just passed the exam. I failed a dozen mock tests, struggled with assignments and nearly gave more times that I can admit. But when the results came out, something unexpected happened. Out of the entire class, only seven of the students have cleared all the subjects. Somehow, I was one of them. This actually boosted a little confidence inside me and pushed me to work a little harder.

The Quiet Decision That Changed Everything

At the start of my second year, I made a quiet deal with myself, to put in effort. “Let’s see how far effort alone can take me.” That single line changed everything.

I stopped obsessing over ranks. I stopped measuring myself against the others in the room. I showed up every day even when I felt invisible. Slowly, studying stopped feeling like punishment and started feeling like a form of self-respect. I was not trying to be the best. I was trying to become someone my past self would look at and say, “Wow. You did it.” By the time final results were announced, I had reached Rank 2. I did not beat the topper. But I beat every version of myself that once believed I was not enough.

You might wonder why a story from an engineering classroom in 1997 belongs on a health tech founder’s page today. Because health tech like many other industries, is built not by overnight brilliance but by long-term resilience, just like how I managed to secure Rank 2.

If you are building in health tech expecting quick wins or instant validation, you are in the wrong place. What you need is the ability to:

• Stay when progress is slow
• Learn when you feel behind
• Continue even when results do not immediately show
• Care deeply even when the system resists change

That second-year promise to trust effort is the same principle that now drives how I build my company, products and teams. Effort would not always guarantee to make you the best. But it will make you better than you were yesterday.

Proving Worth to Creating Impact

Early in my career, like many founders, I thought success was about proving intelligence and showing competence at every level. Over time, I learned that the real work is not proving that you are smart, proving you care enough to stay is what matters.

In health tech, the problems we solve need patience, empathy and a commitment to improve. The same qualities that carried me from the bottom of my class to near the top now guide how I think about innovation:

• Progress over perfection
• Learning over ego
• Consistency over intensity

Some of the best people I have worked with were the ones who kept showing up because they cared. As a founder, I actively look for people who value effort as much as talent and understand that the process of growth is non-linear.

If you are reading this and feeling like you started late and everyone else seems ahead or feel like you are not the smartest in the room and just trying not to get noticed, then I want you to know something that you don’t need to start strong. You just need to keep going long enough for the world to notice.

The Founder’s Mindset

I see my journey as one of becoming. Every product we build and every system we attempt to fix, it’s all part of an ongoing process. The goal for me is not about perfection but bringing efforts to action. I did not win by being exceptional from the start. I won by refusing to disappear, by staying when it was uncomfortable, by learning when it was hard and by trusting effort when confidence was absent. This now sits at the heart of how I build in health tech.

If you are building, struggling, learning or doubting, then you are exactly at the right path where growth begins. Because sometimes, the people who barely make it in are the ones who change the system from the inside.

Has something like that happened to you where you had to power through?