'When I got laid off...': How Anupam Mittal turned a free fall into Shaadi.com’s first step

In 2001, Anupam Mittal was laid off from his job in the US as the dot-com crash wiped out tech dreams overnight. “I had no backup plan,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “And, I still remember that walk back from the office. It wasn’t long, but it felt like a free fall.”

The loss wasn’t just financial. “I had lost most of it anyway in the crash. But because for the first time in many years, I had no idea what came next.”

The uncertainty hit hard. “I also felt I had lost my identity,” Mittal shared. Like many, he initially spiralled into frustration — “Blaming the economy, cursing my luck, refreshing job boards like they were going to fix my life.”

But something shifted. “It wasn’t some motivational quote or Steve Jobs video (those came later),” he said. “It was just a question I scribbled in my diary — ‘What would I build if I had nothing left to lose?’”

That single question sparked a new direction. “I wasn’t clear or confident. But I was excited.”

Mittal stopped applying for jobs and started building. No savings, no high-powered network. Just family support and a dial-up connection. “One rough website. One tiny step at a time.”

A few years later, that blurry little project became Shaadi.com, the matchmaking platform that redefined how India and the world thought about marriage.

“I’m not telling you this to romanticize failure,” he wrote. “It was brutal > No savings, No fancy network. Just me, my cousins & their commitment and a dial-up connection.”

But the takeaway for Mittal was lasting: “Action is the lead domino. You take one step in a direction that excites you – Even if you’re scared. And life starts moving again.”

In his view, momentum beats perfection: “People overestimate strategy and underestimate momentum. We wait for clarity or for funding or for the perfect timing. But what I’ve learned over the years is that clarity doesn’t come before action. It comes from action.”