‘Just have to know what floats your boat': Former Uber CMO on quitting Rs 1 crore job for farm life

Former Uber India chief marketing officer Manisha Lath Gupta was earning around Rs 1 crore a year when she quit in 2020. After more than two decades in corporate jobs, she left the city behind and moved towards a life on a permaculture farm near Panchkula in Chandigarh, Moneycontrol reported on Sunday.

Today, she lives on Aanandaa, surrounded by thousands of trees and hundreds of crops. But the move was not an overnight decision. It had been planned over 12 years, she told Moneycontrol.

"It was something that we had worked for for about 12 years prior," she said.

For professionals considering a similar move, Gupta said it is important to understand the lifestyle before giving up a stable income.

"You need to get to know the place, the lifestyle, everything and it may not be as rosy as it looks initially," she said. "That's when you have to do it in parallel to your day job for a bit so that you still have the financial security that you're getting from the job."

Don't Miss: 'Even with flight, it's cheaper': Indians fly to Dubai just to buy iPhone 18 Pro

From Rs 20,000 salary to Rs 1 crore

Gupta started her career at Unilever in 1997, earning about Rs 20,000 a month. She later held leadership roles at Colgate-Palmolive, Axis Bank, Clix Capital and Uber.

"My salary would have grown 50-fold from the time I started earning to the time I ended my career," she said.

By the time she left Uber, she was earning around Rs 1 crore annually. But she said she did not feel she was giving up the money when she quit.

"When I left my last job, I didn't at all feel like I was giving up the money. In my head, I'd already checked out," she said.

The family spent years saving and building investments before making the move. Their wealth allocation includes roughly 40 percent in real estate, percent in equity mutual funds, 25 percent in debt mutual funds and 10 percent in gold.

"We were earning more than we were spending," she said. "Then we entered the phase of financial planning. How do we save this money? How do we build a corpus? How do we work towards being financially free?"

A slow move from Mumbai to the farm

The couple bought degraded land in Haryana in 2010 while they were still working. They first moved from Mumbai to Gurgaon and later to Panchkula, the nearest city to the farm. They spent two years there before moving permanently to the property.

"Then we used to go back from here to Mumbai, and suddenly the city started looking very different to us," she said.

The daily commute also made her question her priorities.

"Sometimes it would take me 30-40 minutes to get to work, and I started thinking that this cannot be the best use of my life," she said.

"It was a very slow transition," she said. "When you do it slowly, you can test the waters and see if it's right for you. If you just dive into that overnight, not only do you not know what to expect, you may have to retrace your steps."

Farming alone may not be enough

Gupta also warned that farming may not provide the kind of income people expect.

"What I have realised is that there is no money in selling food," she said.

She can sell a bunch of organic spinach directly to consumers for around Rs 40, but gets far less when surplus produce goes to the wholesale market.

"I would maybe get three or four rupees a bundle," she said.

"I recommend people always diversify their revenue streams," she said.

The farm now earns through eight sources, including an online seed store, permaculture tours, sustainable home tours, farm stays, consultations, training programmes, You Tube advertising revenue and the sale of surplus produce.

"There's lots of ways to monetise the project. You just have to know what floats your boat," she said.

What city life doesn't prepare you for

Farm life also comes with fewer conveniences and a different social life.

"Firstly, if you've been living in the city, you're pretty disconnected from how natural ecosystems work and natural processes work," she said. "There is a lot of learning to do and a lot of unlearning of your whole lifestyle."

"There is no Blinkit, no Zomato, no courier delivery," she said. "You have to manage your own waste as well."

"The social interactions that we've become used to in cities are also not there here," she said. "Being happy in your own company is something that people are not used to anymore."

She said the farm is more peaceful, although the worries have changed from corporate deadlines to weather and crops.

Must Read: Dreaming of a Germany job? Indian engineer explains what a €70,000 salary looks like after taxes, rent & other costs

"It is definitely a far more peaceful and calm environment," she said.

"If it rains very heavily, we start wondering if there is going to be flooding. If it doesn't rain, then we have some stress," she said. "They are very survival-type stressors."

For Gupta, the move is also about "ecological security".

"Economic security we are getting now, but we are not getting ecological security," she said. "We don't know how to give our children clean food or fresh air or clean water."

Her advice to professionals considering a similar move is simple.

"Build it in parallel," she said. "Once you have really got a handle on what you're getting into, that's when you should make the plunge."