RASANATH’S JOURNEY TO UPBUILD

Growing up in Mumbai right when India opened up it’s economy for foreign investment was a very defining time. That was when I first saw the movie Wall Street, and it made an immediate impression on me and defined my notion of success. I also wanted to own a yellow convertible and a blue motor boat! Right out engineering school, I had a job offer to work for Deloitte in NY after which I pursued an MBA at Cornell University and had offer to work as an investment banker for Bank of America.

Right before my Wall Street career, I had a scary near-death experience that strongly made me question the entire paradigm of my life. The fragility of my notion of success was so apparent, but agonizingly I knew nothing more than that. But the near-death experience had created a calling to find answers to bigger questions of life, and lived along side my long standing ambition to work on Wall Street. So I decided to give both of those sides a chance. I lived in a monastery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, strictly following the principles of monastic life, while simultaneously working a full time job on Wall Street, for two years.

It was at this time I met my dear friend and co-founder, Hari Prasada, who was on a very similar quest, and our lives intertwined in ways we could not have imagined. Within the walls of monastery our work at Upbuild began in 2008. Our lives became the lab through which we poured our learnings into workshops and tried to build a sense of community for individuals who were interested. Our work continued to grow organically as both Hari and I became full-time monks, and then graduated from the monastery to serve full-time at Upbuild. And the mysteries continue to unfold.