Desk Correspondent , Chennai - Founder and CEO, has gone viral on Reddit by openly sharing his salary journey from earning ₹10,000 a month as a Bengaluru intern in 2018 to building a global tech firm, exposing salary details rarely discussed in India. The B.Tech graduate Immanuel John turned down a ₹25,000 corporate offer for real coding experience in a startup, surviving on Maggi noodles in a shared 2BHK flat while upskilling in blockchain at night. Seven years later his post, explains why transparency matters and how deliberate risks like job switches, night learning, and remote roles pushed him from humbble beginnings to entrepreneurship amid India’s tough job market.

John’s progression featured steady climbs: ₹25,000 monthly as a full-time employee in 2019, ₹35,000 in 2020, ₹45,000 in 2021, then ₹80,000 before hitting ₹3.5 lakh per month in a remote position by 2022. While he was still an empoyee he built Teckas Technologies on the side, specialising in blockchain development, AI agents for business operations, web and mobile apps, and custom products. The nine-employee firm now serves clients in India, Europe and the US, posting six months of consecutive revenue growth, though John earns less than his peak salary to focus fully on expansion.

John urges current graduates and developers who are stuck in their jobs to learn new technologies, tackle uncomfortable roles or launch side projects like micro-SaaS solutions by validating niche problems with users. He emphasised that young professionals from modest backgrounds can take bigger risks in a challenging market. His story from early struggles to serving global clients, shows how foundational low-paying years and strategic leaps create lasting success, championing salary openness as a tool for empowerment in India’s tech industry.