Before Minimalist, Mohit Yadav had a clear fork in the road:
move to London or Hong Kong for a mainstream investment banking role — or stay back in India.
The trade-off was obvious.
A global career meant coming home once a year, around Diwali.
Family reduced to festivals. Life reduced to visits.
So Mohit had a conversation with Rahul.
Not about startups. Not about entrepreneurship.
Those words weren’t even part of the vocabulary then.
The question was simpler:
Can we build something that lets us stay together and live decently?
The goal wasn’t scale.
It wasn’t disruption.
It was a number.
Enough to cover parents’ healthcare.
Kids’ education.
Rent. Food. Stability.
When that number was reached, the thinking was simple:
You don’t go back to a job once life is taken care of.
Minimalist, in many ways, came later.
What came first was a choice —
to optimise not for valuation, but for time, family, and control over life.
Sometimes the strongest companies don’t start with a pitch.
They start with a refusal.