When Rejection Becomes Redirection

One of my founder friends, Shalin Parikh, recently invited me to visit the new global headquarters of MYCPE One. During our conversation, we began talking about turning points, the moments that don’t look like opportunities at first but end up shaping everything that follows. That’s when the theme of Blessing in Disguise came up.

Shalin smiled and said, “My story actually starts with a rejection.” Back in 2006, he had just qualified as a Chartered Accountant, ambitious, prepared, and convinced that hard work and credentials were enough to open doors. Around that time, he interviewed with Fenil Shah, who was then the India lead for Analytix Solutions (then called Sunbelt Solutions). “I was armed with ambition and credentials,” he said. “Fenil interviewed me, and rejected me.”

It wasn’t the outcome he had imagined. He still remembers the exact words that stayed with him long after the interview ended: “What I respect is logic, not the designation or the degree of qualification.” At the time, it hurt. “I thought my qualification should have spoken for itself,” Shalin told me. “Had he hired me, I’d probably have been working at Analytix Solutions today.”

But time doesn’t erase moments like these; it reframes them. What feels like a wound in one season often becomes wisdom in another. The sentence that once cut deep would later become a quiet compass, shaping how Shalin thought about work, people, and the idea of merit itself. That day, he learned that qualification opens a door, but logic keeps it open. And while he couldn’t have seen it then, that rejection was quietly rewriting the direction of his life.

Nineteen years later, Shalin’s story had come full circle. MYCPE One had grown into a global platform, and the company he built had become twice the size of the one that once turned him down. “As Charlie Chaplin said, ‘Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot,’” Shalin reflected. “What once felt like rejection turned out to be one of life’s greatest redirections.” It was a lesson in patience, something he often connects to Warren Buffett’s wisdom: “The stock market is designed to transfer money from the impatient to the patient.” “The same could be said for success,” he said. “Patience, persistence, and perspective turn short-term setbacks into long-term defining moments.”

When MYCPE One inaugurated its corporate headquarters, Shalin invited Fenil Shah as a guest. “We laughed about that interview from years ago,” he recalled. “I told him, ‘I can’t thank you enough for rejecting me. Back then, I cursed you. But if you had accepted me, none of this would have happened.’” Fenil smiled and replied, “Then I deserve founder’s equity in your company, where’s my share?” 

It’s a story that captures the essence of Blessing in Disguise, how time turns sting into story, how perspective reframes loss as lesson, and how every “no” can quietly shape the path to a much larger “yes.”

Some rejections don’t close paths; they clear them. Some detours don’t delay success; they define it. And sometimes, the people who once said no end up being part of the story you’re proudest to tell. Maybe that’s what building really is, the slow realization that life was never working against you; it was just waiting for you to see the long shot.