From a lower-middle-class furniture shop in Nashik to the glass towers of Wall Street and a senior role at PayPal, Veeraj Gadda’s journey is a masterclass in resilience. In a conversation with The Financial Express, Veeraj reveals that his success was not a product of overnight genius, but a gruelling refusal to let failure have the last word.
Early setbacks and the road to Engineering
Veeraj’s father, despite not having a college degree, possessed a clarity of vision that would define his son’s life: his children would achieve what he couldn’t. To make this possible, he opened a small furniture shop and worked over 12 hours a day. Veeraj grew up alongside his two elder sisters, both of whom became doctors.
Veeraj aimed for the IIT entrance in 10th grade. The pressure was immense, and he didn’t clear it. He ended up at a tier-2 engineering college in Mumbai. Computer engineering was a struggle. Many times, Veeraj wondered if he was in the right field. But he kept going, grinding through assignments, and managed decent grades.
The toughest blow came in his final year during campus placements. Veeraj couldn’t clear companies like TCS, while his peers celebrated job offers. “At that moment, I felt like I had sunk into an even deeper hole of failure. I had no clear direction,” Veeraj told Financial Express.
At this critical moment, his father, who never lost an ounce of faith in his son, encouraged him to pursue a master’s abroad. Despite his placement struggles, Veeraj secured admission to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) for a Master’s in Financial Engineering.
To make this possible, his parents mortgaged their house and secured a ₹40 lakh loan. In 2016, Veeraj arrived in the US carrying not just his belongings, but the weight of his family’s sacrifices.
Harsh realities of the American Dream
In 2016, Veeraj landed in America with a dream of becoming a Wall Street trader. Reality, however, was a cold shower. The trading floor was an exclusive club, and survival in the US demanded the one thing he struggled with: coding.
Homesickness, financial constraints, and cultural shocks tested him to the core. He worked a part-time job for $8 an hour while handling a gruelling course load of 16 credits. “I struggled throughout all three semesters. In my second semester, I even received a CGPA of 2.9.”
However, for Veeraj, the “lowest point” didn’t come during a test; it happened in a library. While sitting with a group of Indian peers, the conversation turned to job prospects. “When it came to me, they said they did not think I would get a job because I had no experience and poor grades. I remember hearing that clearly. That night, when I went back, I could not sleep. Those words stayed with me. It was one of the loneliest and lowest moments I had experienced. I almost broke down,” he recalled.
The weight of it all, the grades, the doubt, the distance from home, pulled him under. He skipped his own graduation, unable to face the ceremony. But grief, in Veeraj’s case, was not an ending. It was an intermission. Because with his visa clock now ticking, he had exactly 90 days to find a job or be deported.
‘I can face 99 rejections, but I only need one yes’
“For most of the jobs I applied to, companies did not sponsor H-1B visas. On top of that, many of these roles required prior experience. Because of this, I was often rejected without even getting an interview. The decision was made upfront based on visa constraints. This meant my opportunities were far fewer compared to others in the market.
As a result, I had to do much more to compete. I had to apply to over 1,400 positions. I had to work significantly harder than someone who was already a citizen to secure a job,” he recalled.
Most people would have packed their bags. Veeraj packed his schedule instead. He made a vow: He would not return to India without an offer. He stayed focused, believing, “I can face 99 rejections, but I only need one yes.”
On day 71, with only 19 days left on his visa, Veeraj got an on-site interview on Wall Street in New York City. It was his first visit to the city. The interview lasted four gruelling hours. A friend invited him to explore NYC afterwards, but he replied, “Only if I get the job. Otherwise, there’s no point.”
Three days later, the offer arrived. Veeraj immediately called his parents. “Their tears of joy said everything,” he remembers. The sacrifices, faith, and mortgage had paid off.
The long road through PayPal
Landing on Wall Street was not the end of the struggle — it was simply a different kind of grind. Veeraj’s first role, in consulting, took a toll on his health. Then COVID-19 hit, and the ground shifted again. Offers were rescinded, including one from PayPal. A hiring manager there had been impressed by his interview, but the pandemic froze everything.
With no fallback, Veeraj joined Cedar, a Series B healthcare fintech startup, taking on a remote role building greenfield projects from scratch. For a year and a half, he worked 12-hour days with barely a weekend off, treating the startup as his proving ground.
In 2021, the same PayPal manager who had interviewed him before the pandemic reached out. She had followed his work at Cedar and was impressed by what he had built. This time, the offer stuck. Veeraj joined PayPal as a Senior Solutions Engineer.
It was a quiet vindication, not the dramatic breakthrough of day 71, but something steadier. The person who had believed in him before the world shut down still believed in him after. And the 18 months of relentless work at a startup nobody outside fintech had heard of had become, in hindsight, the résumé that mattered most.
Success comes full circle
When asked what success feels like now, Veeraj didn’t talk about job titles or salaries. He talked about a house. “My parents trusted me; they mortgaged their house and took a ₹40 lakh loan for my master’s because they believed in me. Getting a job and seeing them proud was a true moment of success,” he said.
“Being able to bring them and my sisters to the US, having them stay with me, and buying my own house so they could experience this life that’s real success. Success, for me, is achieving things that bring joy to the people you love.”
He concluded, “To anyone struggling right now: visualise your success. See it. Speak about it. It will push you to work harder. And when it finally happens, reality feels even better than your dreams.”