Written by Karan Yadav was just another name on the attendance sheet in his final year of engineering. At a tier-2 college in Jaipur, he wasn’t on the dean’s list, nor did he have any leadership titles. His grades hovered around 60%, and most professors barely remembered him.
But what Karan lacked in marks, he made up for in curiosity and grit. He had a keen interest in product design and user experience but didn’t know how to turn it into a career. Watching peers prepare for mass recruiter jobs with low packages, Karan knew he wanted more but had no idea where to start.
That’s when a senior told him about LEAP, a platform built to bridge the gap between ambition and access. Hesitant at first, Karan created a profile and joined a virtual cohort of students and young professionals. What he found was transformative.
He was soon paired with Surbhi Rana, a product strategist at a unicorn startup. During their sessions, she didn’t sugarcoat anything. She told him bluntly: “Your portfolio is weak. But your ideas are fresh. Let’s make something out of that.”
Karan took her feedback seriously. Over the next eight weeks, he built three mini-case studies on real-world UX problems using tools he got to know through LEAP’s chatrooms. He redesigned the college’s placement portal as one of his case studies & it went viral in the LEAP community.
Through LEAP, he got to pitch that project in a closed session attended by hiring managers from top product firms. That’s where Lambda Systems, a stealth-mode million-dollar startup from the U.S., noticed him. Impressed by his clarity of thought and storytelling, they flew him out for a virtual hackathon and soon after offered him a Product Intern-to-Hire role with a CTC of ₹26 LPA, a life-changing figure for someone who once doubted he’d make it past ₹3 LPA.
Today, Karan is a product analyst working on cutting-edge interfaces, while mentoring LEAP cohorts on how to turn raw talent into career currency.
“LEAP didn’t give me shortcuts,” Karan reflects. “It gave me direction. And people who actually cared about my growth.”
His journey proves that your GPA doesn’t define your potential, your connections and courage do.
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