1.Rooms I Don't Belong In
ANANYA'S POV
Here is something true about me: I am very good at walking into rooms where I don’t belong and making it look like I was invited. I’ve been doing it since I was twenty-six. Maybe earlier.
I have an instinct for performing ease. I can calculate the structural load of a room the way other people read weather, checking exactly how much judgment the walls can hold. I adjust accordingly, and I’ve gotten good enough at it that most people never notice I’m adjusting at all.
Today, the room was on the fourteenth floor of a glass tower in Koramangala, and I was adjusting so hard my teeth ached.
Nexus Fintech. I’d looked it up so many times over the past two weeks that my browser had started auto-completing the name after the first letter. Fourteen startups funded in eighteen months. Three already past Series B. A founding partner profiled in Mint, The Ken, and a Singapore business magazine I had to translate because thoroughness comes with a language barrier.
The elevator opened. The lobby featured pale wood floors, floor-to-ceiling glass, and a single orchid on the reception desk. Real, not plastic, because I checked. The air-conditioning was the expensive kind where you feel the chill without hearing the hum. The whole floor carried that curated silence unique to places where people decide things about money.
I gave my name to the receptionist. She offered the kind of smile reserved for someone who has an appointment but lacks a reputation. Warm enough. Brief enough.
"Please have a seat, Ms. Sharma. He’ll be with you shortly."
The chair was mid-century leather, and my feet didn’t quite reach the floor. This happens when you’re five feet tall and the furniture is designed by people who have never met anyone under five-six. I try not to care about it. I care about it every single time.
I opened Spekka on my phone. The app loaded in 1.3 seconds. I’d tested it two hundred times in the last week, and it worked every time. I tested it again because testing was what I did now. It was a compulsion, the way some people bite their nails.
Spekka was mine. I built it over eleven months from my bedroom in Mohali while the foundation of my life was actively sinking. It’s a language-learning app, but not the kind that gamifies everything into bright colors and makes you feel like a child rewarded for saying a single word. Spekka was for adults who wanted to actually speak a language instead of performing fluency for an algorithm. It relied on contextual learning and real conversations. The AI-driven accent coaching didn't sound like it was built by someone who'd never left California.
I knew it was good because I am hard on myself about everything, and I was still proud of it. If I’m proud of something, it’s probably very good.
Fifty thousand downloads in the first three months without spending a single rupee on marketing. Word of mouth. A few tech blogs. One tweet from a Bangalore developer that went mildly viral. The revenue was modest but growing, enough to prove the model and create a pitch deck that didn’t require lying about traction.
That’s how Kabir Malhotra’s firm found me. His associate sent the email. I read it three times to make sure it wasn’t spam. They were offering a three-month partnership with office space, mentorship, access to their developer network, and possible seed investment.
Come to Bangalore, they said. Let’s see what we can build together.
I said yes before I finished reading the terms. Then I spent the rest of the night re-reading them to make sure I hadn’t agreed to something reckless. I hadn’t. But checking is the tax I pay now for all the years I didn’t check anything, and I pay it every day without complaining.
The receptionist’s phone rang. She spoke quietly, then looked at me.
"He’s ready for you. Conference room three, down the hall to your left."
I stood up and smoothed my dress. Navy blue, fitted, ending just below the knee. I’d bought it from a place in Sector 17 that I trusted because they never tried to upsell me. I wore it with flats because heels are a promise I can’t keep for more than two hours without wanting to sit on the floor, and I suspected this meeting would run long.
The hallway was lined with framed photos of successful portfolio companies. People shaking hands. People ringing bells at stock exchanges. I walked past them the way you walk past other people’s success when you’re not sure yet if yours will ever look like that.
Conference room three had a glass door. Through it, I could see a long table, a whiteboard, and Bangalore’s skyline doing that thing it does in November, where the light goes soft and the whole city looks like it’s trying to impress you.
There was a man standing by the window, looking at his phone. I knocked once. He looked up.
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