This IIT and Harvard graduate quit her job to build a start-up. So did her husband

Sneha Biswas with her husband in a throwback picture, taken during a vacation to Bermuda. (Image: sneha-biswas/LinkedIn)

In January 2021, Sneha Biswas quit her high-paying consultancy job in the US to build her own education start-up. On the very same day, her husband, too, quit his job with McKinsey – also to work on his start-up. In a LinkedIn post, Biswas, who used to work at Bain & Company, spoke about what living in a “family of founders” entails and what drove them to give up their lucrative careers for the competitive world of start-ups.

Sneha Biswas, a Harvard Business School and IIT Kharagpur alumna, said they were inspired by Harvard’s mission of making a difference. Having had the privilege of education and work experience from some of the top places in the world, Biswas said, she felt it was almost her responsibility to give back.

So in early 2021, she started Bengaluru-based Early Steps Academy with the aim of making education more relevant and accessible, and soon moved back to India. The online live learning platform provides “curated, Harvard-like engaging content” to learners aged between eight to 18.

“Jan 2021, we both quit our jobs with McKinsey and Bain on the same day," wrote Biswas, sharing a picture with her husband, whom she met while doing her undergrad. "We both started-up full time. He started up in #healthcare and I in #k12education - to solve some of the biggest problems that have bothered us for years,” Biswas wrote on Linkedin this morning.

In a home of two founders, “chaos, firefighting, stress and sleepless nights” were common, said Biswas, but so were “intellectual debates, moments of happiness, and the deep gratification.”

But vacation days are a thing of the past for the couple. Biswas admits they have not taken a single holiday since starting up. The photo in her post from today morning? That’s from a Bermuda vacation taken many months ago – when vacation days simply meant updating the company calendar for approval.

But it is the conviction that they are both truly making a difference every day that drives them, said Biswas. “It’s only on some Fridays like today, when this family of founders craves for some sunshine and blue waters like this,” she added. "Building takes a lot! As a #founder, you only wish that your customers realize that devotion."

According to AP News, in November 2021, Early Steps Academy raised $1.2 million seed capital from BEENEXT, Whiteboard Capital and Taurus Ventures.