For founders with no work-life balance, Rajdip Gupta has three mantras. Or four.

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₹5,922 crore (about $707 million) through a 57.56% promoter stake acquisition, one of the largest cross-border deals in the communications platform space. That was Gupta’s claim to fame: Having bootstrapped a billion-dollar company and selling it to a global peer. Gupta is also a keen investor.

Apart from an incubation centre to back early business ideas, he plans to invest more than ₹300 crore in startups through his investment company, Clear Bridge. As part of Mint’s Founder Diaries podcast series, we take you through Gupta’s stellar journey and his life mantras. Edited excerpts: As a kid, I always wanted to do something on my own.

During my college days, I used to sell software to people and colleges. The entrepreneurial journey started during my first year of graduation. That’s when I realised that once you want to run your own business, you really need to have full command of it.

However, since I come from a very small middle-class family, there was not much of an opportunity to build something of your own. So I started working as a hardcore developer. I began my career as a software programmer and worked with multiple companies for 6-7 years.

My last assignment was with IBM in the UK, where I was a part of the machine learning innovation lab. During that time, I realised the potential of mobile phones. In developed countries, people have several use cases for mobile phones, which include interacting with people across borders.

In almost all emerging countries, I realised there was a huge gap where incoming and outgoing also were charged ₹16. So the question was, how can I build something for a market like India or the Middle East. I decided one fine day that I’ll quit and start something new.