Harshil Tomar’s viral post about unconventional entrepreneurs he met in Himachal Pradesh has sparked a wider conversation about the narrow career paths most city-educated Indians are taught to pursue
Harshil Tomar, founder of Dream Launch Studios, went to Dharamshala expecting a break. He came back with a fundamentally different view of what building a business actually looks like.
In a post on X that quickly gained traction, Tomar described meeting a man who had spent years running a neighbourhood kirana store before pivoting to build a business generating approximately $700,000 in annual recurring revenue, roughly Rs 6 crore, with a team of just two people. No venture capital. No engineering degree. No startup ecosystem.
What the Trip Actually Taught Him
The former shopkeeper was not the only person Tomar encountered who challenged his assumptions. He also met someone running a highly specialised business helping clients navigate international visa processes, a niche he admitted he had never fully understood despite having vaguely heard of it. And he sat across the table from a man who had left a corporate job at a large multinational to focus entirely on quantitative trading, building a personal simulation engine using Anthropic’s Claude not as a product to sell but purely to sharpen his own strategies. Tomar noted that this trader had more clarity about his single narrow area than most founders he knows have about their entire companies.
The Broader Point He Is Making
Tomar reflected that growing up in a city instils a surprisingly narrow idea of what careers are available. Technology, marketing, sales, human resources. Most people pick a lane from that limited menu and never look beyond it.
His conclusion was direct: people do not discover what is genuinely possible until they spend time with those who have already gone and done it. Reading about niche businesses and sitting across from someone living one, he said, are two entirely different experiences.
The post has resonated widely among founders and professionals questioning whether the conventional paths they were handed were ever the only options.
