For many young graduates, landing a well-paid job in a reputed multinational company immediately after college is seen as the ideal start to a career. On paper, Vidhi Mundra’s life seemed to be moving in the right direction. However, she decided to move away from that certainty when she left her seven-figure job at Barclays without taking up another job.
(Also read: Barclays techie gives parents and sister first-flight, five-star staycation: ‘Last in the race to success, yet I won’)
Speaking to HT.com, Mundra said that the decision has not been taken because of a bad experience at the workplace. Instead, it came from a growing realization that she wanted to create, experiment, and work closer to creation rather than remain in a predictable corporate structure.
LSR to Barclays
Mundra was born and brought up in Jodhpur. She studied B.Com Honors from Lady Shri Ram College and graduated in 2024. Immediately after college, she was placed at Barclays through campus placement, where she joined as a Graduate Analyst. His office was located in Noida.
He said, “My experience at Barclays was really amazing in the beginning. It was my first real exposure to the corporate world, and to be honest, everything felt a little surreal at first.” She said she often finds herself interacting with senior leadership and managing directors of global teams, which the 21-year-old finds “incredible”.
Mundra said that within the first few months he also received recognition from London-based directors for his work and process improvement initiatives. Since she was on UK hours, her workday usually ran from 12:30 pm to 9:30 pm.
“I usually start by catching up on emails and pending communications from the previous day. A large part of the day involves BAU operations, troubleshooting and dealing with various situations that arise in real time,” she said.
(Also read: Patna youth left Barclays job, achieved 11th rank in UPSC Civil Services Examination)
Mundra described his annual compensation as a seven-figure package. However, he decided not to publicly disclose the exact amount due to privacy concerns.
When success seemed incomplete
Despite a strong start, Mundra said that the role started feeling a bit lacking around six to seven months.
She said, “I remember coming home after work and feeling restless and anxious despite doing everything ‘right’. It’s hard to explain, but there’s that feeling of falling asleep knowing that what you’ve been doing with your life doesn’t completely matter to you anymore.”
He emphasized that the work environment was great and that he was grateful for the opportunity. However, he began to feel that he was created not just to work in a system but to create a system.
He said, “This feeling became stronger when the work started becoming repetitive in such a way that I no longer found any challenge or stretch. I don’t hate monotony. I hate monotony that doesn’t help me grow.”
Mundra said he gradually realized that the parts of the work he enjoyed most included construction, improving systems, solving undefined problems and creating something from scratch. The idea of establishing stability so early in life scared him more than taking risks.
“I was also the youngest person at Barclays – most of the people around me were in their late 20s and at a very different stage of life. And while there’s nothing wrong with stability, I realized that at 21, I wasn’t personally looking for stability yet. I wanted exploration, experimentation, uncertainty and experiences that would take me beyond what I already knew about myself. To be honest, I fell into a predictable version of life so early on.” The idea of settling down scared me more than taking risks. On paper, my life looked successful, but internally I knew I wanted a very different kind of challenge and mastery, I just didn’t know what I was made for yet, so I left.
leaving without a backup plan
Leaving Barclays without another offer was one of the toughest decisions he had to make, Mundra said.
He said, “People often just see the brand names, LSR, Barclays and assume my life is sorted. It certainly is in some way but what people don’t see is the pressure associated with those names.”
She said that people around her questioned her decision and asked why she would want to “ruin an already established career”. Mundra understood her concerns, but felt she could no longer ignore what she was feeling.
“For me, leaving Barclays was a leap of faith in myself. I didn’t have all the answers. I just knew I couldn’t ignore what I was feeling anymore,” she said.
His biggest fear was simple. “What if I was wrong?” she remembers. “What if this decision was just an emotional phase? What if I couldn’t prove myself outside the structure and reliability of established institutions? What if I had moved away from something stable to an idea of myself that didn’t really exist?”
Over time, he said, he learned to look at decisions differently. He said, “No decision is right or wrong. You make a decision and then work hard to make it right.”
five months in jodhpur
After resigning, Mundra went back to Jodhpur for five months. He described that period as one of the most uncomfortable periods of his life.
“Leaving Barclays seemed empowering in my mind, but then the reality of packing up my life and moving back to Jodhpur with no clear plan ahead set in,” he said. “For five months, I had to sit with the uncertainty of my decision every day.”
She had not lived at home for about four to four and a half years, which made the transition emotionally difficult. Coming from the fast-paced corporate life of a metro city, she suddenly found herself spending many hours with her thoughts.
“There were days when I would lie in bed staring at the ceiling for hours and question everything, my decisions, my future, my identity, my abilities,” she said.
The hardest part, she said, was watching her peers follow traditional paths while she was still trying to understand what would happen next.
He said, “The biggest fear I struggled with was the fear of being average and never reaching my potential. It scared me more than failure.”
Choosing an Internship After a Corporate Job
After much thought for about four months, Mundra decided to explore the kind of work that actually interested him. She was curious about the direct-to-consumer sector, specifically beauty and personal care, and began reaching out to startups and founders.
She found some full-time opportunities at the Founders office but wasn’t completely convinced. Eventually, she landed an internship opportunity at a D2C skincare startup that excited her.
“I was moving back to Delhi from a full-time role at a reputed MNC with a strong salary package to an internship with a stipend and I wasn’t even sure if I would ultimately like the startup ecosystem long-term or not,” she said.
She knew this move would seem illogical to many, but she decided not to base her decisions solely on titles or how they would look on her CV.
“I realized that if I really wanted to get somewhere different in life, I had to be willing to go through some uncomfortable places first,” she said.
He said that internship changed the direction of his life. This gave her clarity that she enjoyed the chaos, speed, problem solving and creativity of startup life.
Life on Fix My Curls
Mundra now lives in Gurgaon and works in the founding office of D2C haircare startup Fix My Curls. Their role is limited to brand, content, strategy, execution and problem solving.
“I really think these decisions changed the course of my life,” he said. “For the first time in months, I stopped questioning whether I had made the wrong decision to leave Barclays.”
Today, Mundra said his life is almost the opposite of what it was at Barclays. It’s more unpredictable, intense, and full of pressure, but also more in line with who she wants to be.
“The startup world is full of constant struggle, uncertainty, pressure, and problem solving, but strangely, my mind feels more at peace now than before,” he said. “I think the difference is that stress feels very different when it comes from something you consciously chose for yourself.”
She is also creating content on LinkedIn and Instagram, building a community of over 32,500 people on LinkedIn and over 8,000 people on Instagram.
A lesson in risk and self-confidence
Looking back, Mundra believes that quitting at the age of 21 gave him the freedom to experiment early. He said that youth should not let one job role or one company become their entire identity.
“You are always more than the designation written on your LinkedIn profile,” she said.
For him, success is extremely personal. He said, “External success without internal satisfaction eventually begins to feel hollow. You can have the right college, the right company, the right salary, a high-growth startup or business and still feel disconnected from yourself.”
(Also read: Busting the IIT myth: 5 Indian-origin leaders in top global companies)
When asked about her line, “At 21, I would rather experiment early than have regrets throughout my life,” Mundra said that it means even more to her now. However, she clarified that she does not believe in romanticizing decisions taken without thinking.
“Before leaving Barclays, I made sure I had enough emergency savings to sustain myself for 6 to 8 months because if you choose to take risk, you have to take responsibility for that risk,” he said.
She added, “And honestly, if I had to do it all over again, I still would.”
