When everything falls apart, it’s your people and your grit that hold you up

At eChai Ventures, our Unforgettable Lessons series shares the stories founders carry with them, the turning points that test not just their strategies, but their resilience, their values, and their ability to keep moving through uncertainty.

For Maithili Shah, Founder of Syntelligence Fintech, that moment came during one of the most difficult chapters of her entrepreneurial journey.

Here’s how she tells it:

I still remember those months as if they stretched into years, when I had just welcomed my second baby, life and business collided in unexpected ways.

Within weeks, we lost a large client, perhaps because I trusted too much and wasn’t “commercial” enough. Soon after, 40% of our team left, some to get married, some moving abroad, others for better opportunities.

It was one of those moments when I kept asking myself: Am I building a business my way, with heart, or should I become more commercial? Can I afford to be vulnerable and still be a leader? I don’t think I have a clear answer even today.

What I did know is that in that period, survival depended on showing up in the smallest possible steps. To survive, we broke everything into micro-pieces: over-communicating, moving from a virtual setup into a physical office, and creating an environment where we could look each other in the eye and rebuild trust.

Our work became intense and fragmented, sometimes measured in two-hour stretches instead of full days. It was exhausting and overwhelming, but also built with grit and togetherness. And slowly, we climbed out. Not because of strategy alone, but because every team member extended themselves with open arms and open hearts.

The question shifted from What can I do in a day? to What can I do in these two hours?