The Finish Line Keeps Moving

In startups, some moments feel like the story is complete. The launch that finally happens. The first customer who pays. The funds that land in the bank. Each one feels like a finish line, the point where the struggle should ease.

Other times, it feels like the story is over for the opposite reason. Rejections pile up. Cash runs out. A venture doesn’t take off. That too feels like a finish line. But in startups, it is never really the end. What looks like the last page, good or bad, usually turns into the first page of the next chapter.

To explore this, I asked a few founder friends to share their own finish-line moments, the ones that seemed final but became the start of something new. These are their stories, in their own words.

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For Riddhi Sharma, Co-Founder of Baby Organo, that moment came during fundraising:

“Sometimes you need to almost give up to realize the story isn’t ending, it’s just turning a page. When we started BabyOrgano, it was with a simple vision, to bring trusted Ayurvedic wellness to every child.

But the fundraising journey was brutal. After 40+ rejections, each ‘no’ felt heavier than the last. I still remember the evening after the 42nd rejection, I shut my laptop and told myself, maybe this is where BabyOrgano ends.

Around the same time, one of the emerging D2C-focused investors also rejected us. A few of our fellow startups got funded by them, and that stung even more. We felt defeated, and for the first time, truly considered giving up.

And then, out of the blue, came a call from DevX. That one conversation changed everything. They believed in us, invested, and stood by us as true partners.

From there, our journey transformed, from pre-seed to pre-Series A, into something far more fulfilling than we could have imagined. Looking back, I don’t think we would have come this far if we had received that earlier D2C investment. Sometimes rejection isn’t the end—it’s the redirection toward the right partner.”

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For Nikita Maheshwari, Co-Founder of Tatkalorry, the failure of her first venture became the foundation of her second:

“So, my first business, Tile Bazaar, was like running a 400-meter dash. The finish line felt so close, so real. But when it failed, I didn’t see it as the end of a race. I saw it as the moment I finally understood the real problem was never about selling tiles, it was always about getting them from point A to point B.

This was my ‘finish line that wasn’t.’ It was the moment I stopped looking at Tile Bazaar as a finished chapter and started seeing it as a detailed case study. The failure wasn’t a period at the end of a sentence; it was the comma that led to a new one.

That’s how Tatkalorry was born. The finished line of one venture was the precise starting point for the next. The failure of one dream led to the practical solution of a bigger problem.”

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For Nikunj Thakkar, Founder of Upsurge Ventures and earlier Founder of Shoppr, the finish line came during the pandemic:

“When we launched Shoppr, momentum was strong. We were adding users, getting feedback, and even planned a US/Canada trip to raise funds. Then Covid hit. With limited runway, what was supposed to be a growth fundraise turned into a survival fundraise. Rejections piled up, and it felt like the end of our startup journey. But that ‘end’ led to an acquihire with Whatfix, where I launched a new product line and started the next phase of my journey.”

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For Utpal Vaishnav, Founder of Upsquare, a failed attempt abroad became the foundation of his next win:

“In 2018, I was in South Korea chasing an Oxygen Concentrator venture. The numbers flopped. I came back empty-handed but with crystal clarity: that wasn’t my thing. That clarity sparked my next play, a cluster of 3 apps that made ₹1 Cr profit in the next 14 months.”

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For Mrinal Rai, Co-Founder of Intugine, a project taken up for survival opened the door to a much bigger opportunity:

“Back in 2018, we were still a B2C company building a wearable device called Nimble to play games and control smart devices with gesture control and voice commands. Because of multiple manufacturing issues and struggles, we started taking B2B projects to sustain ourselves. In that journey, we took up a project to help enable the tracking of the Big Billion Day sale. The project was very crucial for us as the revenue from it was needed to sustain us and pay salaries to our employees.

The project was actually a success and it served the purpose of sustaining us for the next 4 months, but more than that, it was the start of our pivot from a B2C wearable startup to a B2B SaaS startup. The realization that a company as big as Flipkart was struggling with a solution to track their consignments helped us see that this was a much larger problem for large enterprises.

Today, we work with 100+ clients and track close to a million trips every month. I could never have imagined back then that we would one day be building in the supply chain domain.”

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For Nadeem Jafri, Founder of Hearty Mart, the decision was stark, close shop or reinvent:

“After 4 years into business at Juhapura and one franchisee already operational, we still found ourselves not doing well on the balance sheet. We had to decide our next step — to close the shop or act differently to survive. We decided to enter bulk business just to support our retail operations. Today this bulk business has turned out into a large enterprise with around 100 employees and multicrore turnover.”

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For Bhavesh Patel, Co-Founder of Brands.live, an ending turned into reinvention:

“The day I wound down my advertising agency in 2019 felt like the finish line of my creative career, after years of working with India’s top brands, I believed I’d achieved my professional ambitions. But that moment quickly transformed: I realized true impact comes when creativity reaches millions of Indian businesses, not just a few big names. So, what looked like the end was actually the beginning of my journey as a startup founder with Brands.live.”

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For Eashita Maheshwary, Community & Growth at Razorpay Rize, even stepping away from being a founder turned into a new chapter of impact:

“In 2022, I stepped away from my previous startup. I was no longer a ‘founder’ and wasn’t sure of my identity in the ecosystem. I still had my work, network, and peers, but it was time to rebuild.

Over the next 14 months, I travelled to 10+ new cities ranging from Guwahati and Guntur to Kolkata and Jaipur only to meet founders, investors, and enablers; ran sessions and workshops at 15+ events, including a few top IITs; helped build business verticals for a few startups; and realised that sometimes your work speaks for you. That journey has enabled me to lead one of the country’s most impactful D2C communities (Razorpay Rize D2C+) feeling like a pseudo co-founder to 300+ brands.

The only way to keep growing is to keep going. Your network and peers often help you embrace the finish line that keeps moving.”

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And for Mitesh Shethwala, Founder of Currently, what looked like arrival instantly shifted into the next challenge:

“After a grinding first year stuck at ~30 DAU, we rebuilt Currently from the ground up using twelve months of user calls and UX rewrites, and within weeks of relaunch, usage started compounding hour by hour to 12,000+ DAU.

The ‘finish line’ of acquisition instantly moved to a new race: scaling infra, support, and uptime so we could serve everyone without a minute of downtime.”

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Each story is different, but the pattern is the same. In startups, the finish line never really arrives. What looks like the end is almost always the beginning of something else. The story keeps moving forward.