"They Said Motherhood Would End My Career. Few Years Later, I'm a Founder."

"They Said Motherhood Would End My Career. Nine Years Later, I'm a Founder."

By Shraddha Dudhgaoli

When I was young, people knew me as my father's daughter.

I was proud of him and I always will be.

I also wanted my own name in the world.

"One day," I told him, "people will know you as my father."

He smiled and I meant every word.

Years later, established in my career, a colleague told me my career was over because I was pregnant. I thought about his mother as she had worked her entire life. I wondered if he saw the contradiction. I decided it didn't matter and didnt respond to that comment. Instead I walked to my car and cried the entire way towards home.

Somewhere in those tears was a thought, which today I am not proud of.

Maybe they are right, maybe you cannot have both, or maybe a career has to stop if you want to give motherhood a chance.

I had heard that my entire life from society, from well-meaning people, and from voices I had absorbed without realising it.

It was August 2017, which is also my birthday month. Most women plan something for their last birthday before becoming a mother and I spent mine trying to hold myself together in tears on a drive home.

I didn't sleep that night.

By morning I had made a decision, not an inspirational promise, instead a practical one. Whatever I earn, I would spend every rupee of it on house help and childcare if I had to.

I would build skills and earn more later, but I would not stop. I was going to prove that thought wrong, not for anyone else, but for every version of myself that had almost believed it.

People will look at what came next and call it luck. They are not entirely wrong as success and opportunity have a huge luck component. However, I strongly belive that proper timely strategy is a luck magnet. I chose to be ready when opportunities arrived.

I started as a tech communicator, learning to translate complexity into clarity. Then product management found me; or I found it. 😊

I worked with Optiva, Mastercard, Western Union, and UBS. Each role challenging than the last. Each one a quiet proof that the promise I made to myself that August evening I was keeping.

Nobody called my career over again.

I won't pretend the years were clean.

In 2021, I lost my father to COVID. I couldn't attend his funeral; the country was in lockdown and not attending the funeral I was protecting my little one. I met my mother only five months later and I was depressed in a way that had no name. My spouse held me together.

My leadership at UBS gave me space to heal.

Fifteen days after losing him, I told my spouse we were buying a house for my mother. So she could live close, so she would have support.

I did not ask for permission, I just told him.

I did buy a house for my mother.

All those years of working after having a child, spending on house help, on babysitters, on everything that made it possible for me to keep going; I saved enough to make that decision on my own. That was the moment I understood what I was building all those years. Not just a career, it was the freedom to show up for the people who mattered most, on my own terms.

Motherhood gave me tools I didn't expect; the ability to make decisions without complete information, to stay calm when everything feels urgent, to lead with empathy as a strategy rather than a sentiment. Grief sharpened those tools further.

In April 2026, I launched InterviewAlpha.ai; not just to build another AI product, but because I wanted to build something that gives people more confidence to crack the dream job interview than I had at every stage where someone, in some room, suggested I had limits I should accept. The platform helps candidates prepare for interviews with AI-powered mock sessions, real feedback, and structured coaching. The kind of support I wish I had at every difficult crossroad of my own career.

My father never got to see this chapter and he never got to be known as my father the way I promised him he would be. I think about him every time I sit down to build and every time I choose not to stop.

Years later, I'm a founder.

I'm still becoming the person I told him I would be.

One sentence from one person could have become my reality.

I chose not to let it.

Don't let someone else's perception become your reality.

Shraddha Dudhgaoli is the Founder and Chief Product Officer of InterviewAlpha.ai, an AI-powered interview preparation platform.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shraddha-d-9399ba26/