‘Kidney Touching Story’: IIT Bombay Alumnus Leaves $8,000 Silicon Valley Internship To Build Startup In India

Aman Goel, an IIT Bombay alumnus and co-founder of GreyLabs AI, sparked online discussion after revealing why he returned to India to become an entrepreneur. Despite a lucrative software engineering internship in Silicon Valley, Goel gained the clarity that he wanted to build his own companies in his home country.

A viral post by IIT Bombay alumnus and GreyLabs AI cofounder Aman Goel has reignited conversations around entrepreneurship, ambition, and the lure of Silicon Valley after he revealed why he chose to leave behind a lucrative US career opportunity and return to India to build startups.

Sharing his journey on X, Goel recalled arriving in San Francisco nearly a decade ago as a 20-year-old student from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay for a software engineering internship at Rubrik. According to him, the internship initially felt like a dream come true.

“Ten years ago, I landed in San Francisco as a 20-year-old kid from IIT Bombay, headed to Palo Alto to intern at Rubrik’s Software Engineering Team. I was earning $8,000 a month. It felt like a dream,” he wrote.

Goel said the internship introduced him to world-class engineering culture, scalable backend systems, and cutting-edge product development. He also credited a senior from IIT Bombay for mentoring him and deepening his interest in databases and backend engineering. He noted that he was among Rubrik’s early interns in 2016, years before the company went public.

However, despite the attractive salary and future opportunities in Silicon Valley, Goel said the experience gave him something more valuable than money — clarity about where he wanted to build his future.

“But here is what that internship really gave me: Clarity. I realized I did not want to build my life in the Bay Area. I wanted to go back to India and build something of my own,” he shared.

After returning to India in 2016, Goel devoted his final year in college to understanding entrepreneurship beyond coding and engineering. He said he became deeply focused on learning product strategy, marketing, sales, and business building, which eventually became his “obsession.”

Referencing a quote by Bill Gates — “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years” — Goel reflected on how the line resonated with his entrepreneurial journey.

He later co-founded Cogno AI, scaled it past $1 million in revenue, saw it get acquired, and eventually launched GreyLabs AI. According to his post, the company has now raised nearly Rs 100 crore from investors including Elevation Capital and z47, employs over 85 people, and works with more than 75 BFSI clients across India.

The post quickly went viral online, drawing admiration, humour, and debate. One user joked, “$8,000 a month at 20 is not an internship, that is a pre-IPO adoption scheme.” Another wrote, “Courage is what it takes to leave comfort and become entrepreneur.”

Not everyone agreed with his decision, though. One user questioned, “What prompted you to come back to Bombay? You could have just stayed there and build a startup.” Another bluntly remarked, “I see the word – AI and I stop reading this!”

An emotional response that gained attention read, “Feeling proud for you brother …You chose to come back to your mothers who both need you …more than that countless bright young minds who can’t afford to go abroad.”