By Sanjay Sharma
Publication Date: 2026-08-07 05:04:00
When students prepare for competitive exams, it often feels as though one rejection can define an entire future. Missing a preferred branch, failing to secure admission to a dream university or watching a startup collapse can seem like the end of the road.Aravind Srinivas’ journey tells a very different story.Long before he became the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI—one of the world’s fastest-growing artificial intelligence companies—Srinivas collected a series of disappointments that many would have considered career-ending. He couldn’t get into Computer Science at IIT Madras, narrowly missed changing his branch by just 0.01 CGPA, was initially denied entry into a machine learning course, faced rejection from MIT for his PhD application and watched his first startup fail.Today, he leads a company valued in the billions, has worked at OpenAI, Google and DeepMind, and regularly shares advice with students navigating an AI-driven future.His story reminds students that success is rarely built on uninterrupted victories. More often, it is built on how one responds after hearing “no.”
The IIT rejection that changed his path
Like thousands of engineering aspirants, Aravind Srinivas dreamed of studying Computer Science at IIT Madras. His JEE rank, however, fell short of the cutoff.Instead, he joined the Electrical Engineering dual-degree programme.For many students, not getting their dream branch often feels like an irreversible setback. Srinivas chose a different…
