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What if the thing you need most isn't another promotion, a bigger salary or another year of working harder?


What if you simply need to stop?


That was the question Vimarsh Razdan , co-founder and CEO of actor Kusha Kapila 's shapewear brand Underneat, seems to have answered for himself when he walked away from a ₹3 crore-a-year job and spent an entire year travelling.


It wasn't a decision that everyone understood.


After all, Razdan had spent 13 years building his career. He had a high-paying job and a demanding role that, by conventional standards, looked like the kind of position people spend years trying to reach.


But behind the impressive salary was a routine that had slowly taken over his life.


"I left a ₹3 crore CTC job and travelled the whole world for one year," Razdan wrote in a LinkedIn .


For years, work had been his entire world.


He recalled working 18 to 20 hours a day and said that going home had become little more than a chance to sleep before starting all over again.


"For 13 years of my life, I only went home to sleep. I used to work 18-20-hour days, and it became normal for me," he wrote.


And then, one day, he stopped.


There was no elaborate five-year plan. No carefully calculated career break. He simply decided he couldn't keep living that way.


So he quit.


‘People said I was crazy’


Razdan knew what people would think.


Walking away from a ₹3 crore CTC job isn't exactly the decision most people would make, particularly after spending more than a decade building a career.


Some people told him he was throwing away his momentum. Others thought the decision was simply crazy.


But Razdan chose to travel instead.


He spent a year exploring different parts of the world, travelling to places including Iceland, Croatia and Paris.


For someone who had spent years rushing from one deadline to another, the experience offered something he hadn't had in a long time: space.


And that space changed him.


"People said I was crazy - 'You're throwing away momentum.' But that year broke the loop for me," he wrote.


The break wasn't about running away from ambition. If anything, it helped him understand what kind of ambition he actually wanted.


He came back with a different idea of success


When Razdan eventually returned to work, he realised he didn't want to go back to the same cycle.


The old version of success had been about working longer, moving faster and constantly pushing himself.


Now, he wanted something different.


"When I came back, I didn't build the same way. I stopped optimizing for grind and started optimizing for rest, thinking time, and people around me who could actually carry weight," he said.


That change in mindset also influenced what he chose to build next.


Razdan, who studied at NIFT Delhi before pursuing his education at IIM Calcutta, said the year away gave him the opportunity to think about what he really wanted from his career - and, perhaps more importantly, who he wanted beside him while building it.


"The year away forced me to think about what I actually wanted to build and who I wanted to build it with. It gave me clarity, and that's what helped me build my other two businesses," he wrote.


Today, Razdan is the co-founder and CEO of Underneat, the shapewear brand associated with Kusha Kapila.


His story isn't really about quitting a ₹3 crore job.


It's about what happened after he quit.


He took a step away from the life he'd spent 13 years building, even when that meant disappointing people and giving up a salary many would find difficult to walk away from.


And in that pause, he found a new way of looking at work.


Perhaps that's the part of his story that will resonate with people who feel trapped in the endless cycle of work, deadlines and chasing the next milestone.


Sometimes, stepping away doesn't mean you've given up.


Sometimes, you just need enough distance to see where you're actually going.


And when you finally return, you might realise you don't want to build the same life again.