Not many Pune people have Mark Zuckerburg as a wedding guest. Not only did this happen to Ruchi Sanghvi, but he is among her close friends. It all started when a newly graduated engineer from Carnegie Mellon decided she did not like life in New York and tossed it up for life on the West Coast, eventually joining a small start-up called Facebook.
Ruchi is a born and bred Punekar. She went to St Josephs and thanks to her disciplinarian parents, cycled to school, come rain or shine. It was an early guide on how to negotiate and conquer obstacles. Her most abiding memory of school is being a part of the hockey team for six years.
They were trained by Olympian Namrata Shah and often travelled away for tournaments. She vividly recollects a trip to Sangli passing sugar factories with their characteristic stench.
Team spirit was inculcated in her at an early stage of life, when out of their comfort zone, Ruchi and her teammates learnt to tolerate all kinds of conditions. It was a bonding experience.
Fergusson College for 11th and 12th was another cherished experience. Along with her batch mates, they inculcated a conscientious regimen, keen on changing how junior college at Fergusson was viewed. They took tiffins to school and attended all classes. In the science division, they knew all their professors and classmates. In fact, Ruchi is still in touch with many of her Fergusson friends, many of who came to the US for their Masters and are pursuing interesting careers.
Ruchi herself left Pune because her mother was not only keen she get the best education, but also wanted her to be independent. At her mother’s insistence, she was driven to attend the best college and get her technical degree. Engineering was always on the cards for this girl who eventually wanted to take over her Dad’s business in heavy infrastructure. At Carnegie Mellon, she chose electrical and computer engineering. She was at CMU for four and a half years and completed her Bachelors and Masters, with honours. She met her future husband, Aditya Agarwal, an Indian from Malaysia, while at CMU.
Most of her friends seemed to head to New York City post-graduation. Ruchi also accepted a job at a derivatives trading desk. Within three weeks she realized it was a wrong move. Stuck in small cubicles, Ruchi realized people were putting in eighty to hundred-hour work weeks with no time to meet and her skill set would not even be at the core of her work experience. Before she could start working, she quit and headed west, joining Oracle within two weeks, as a software engineer. She lasted four months at Oracle because she was introduced to a phenomenon called Facebook.
Fortunately for Ruchi, she had already experienced Facebook as a user during her Masters at Carnegie Mellon. She had used the product every day and loved it so when she realized they were looking for engineers; it was a no brainer. In the early days, Facebook was operating out of an office above a Chinese restaurant at Palo Alto. A chalkboard outside the office announced they were looking for engineers. There were people working at desks, lounging on the floor and many Stanford students just hanging out. The energy was palpable and she loved the vibe. Ruchi had to wait for three hours before someone showed up to interview her. She hung around eventually interviewing with Mark and two others. And that was it. She was the first female engineer at Facebook and stayed with the company for five and a half years.
She and Aditya left Facebook to start their own company, Cove, collaboration software for teams and businesses. A year and a half after starting, their company was acquired by Dropbox. While Aditya continued, Ruchi moved on because she wanted to travel the world before having children. An eight-month sojourn, mainly in South-East Asia, saw Ruchi get more spiritual. Sometimes she met up with friends, at other times she was alone with her guide as she navigated South China, Vietnam and Indonesia. In the tropical rainforest of West Papua, she came across tribes that are still cannibals. She learnt to travel with tobacco and cabbage, more valued than money.
Post her travels she returned to California, becoming an angel investor. She started South Park Commons, modelled on intellectual societies of the 1700s, such as Junto or Leather Apron Club started by Benjamin Franklin in 1727. The idea was to gather friends who had sold companies and early engineers in successful companies who were trying to figure out what to do. They discussed various topics, pondered interesting ideas, dwelled on new research, explored directions and focused on mutual improvement and unrealized opportunities.
Eventually Ruchi accepted an invitation to be on the board of Paytm, not realizing how it’s popularity would soar post Modi’s demonetization scheme. Ruchi realized the importance of transacting and knew the payment platform was a good idea. She quit Paytm only after pregnancy and a child made it difficult for her to travel to India four times a year.
Having a baby has brought another dimension to Ruchi’s already full life. She laughs when she reveals it takes a village to raise a child and admits how difficult it is to raise her son without family. That being said, she has great friends and a helpful community who pitch in. She has still not visited Pune and plans to wait until her son is slightly older. But she misses the home she lived in for eighteen years.
Apart from her immediate and extended family, she misses the food, the colours and smells of India. Festivals such as Dassera, Holi and Diwali are her most precious memories. She reminisces about going to the pool with her family on Sundays, running on the university grounds, hikes on tekdi and visiting Lonavala during the monsoon, stopping off to get bhajias on the way. She rues how many concrete reminders of Pune no longer exist. Luckily she still has staple favourites such as Joshi Vadewala, Marzorin, Vaishali, Cake & Counter and Shivsagar.
Will she ever return? As of now she is not sure but never say never is her mantra. Things move so fast she plans one year at a time. In the meantime, this Pune girl is enjoying time-off from her successful career and focusing her energy on being a mother.
- Your Legacy Will Live Forever, Wendell My Friend - February 18, 2020
- What I Enjoyed Reading In 2017 – Part Two - January 13, 2018
- What I Enjoyed Reading In 2017 – Part One - January 11, 2018
