Laid off, locked down, then lifted off: How Vijay Sandhu built a 150-employee IT company | Chandigarh News
By the time Vijay Sandhu was laid off from his job, entrepreneurship was the last thing on his mind. Like thousands of IT professionals, he had followed a predictable path — engineering degree, software job, and hopes of a stable corporate career. Business ownership was unfamiliar territory. No one in his family had ever run a company. Today, Sandhu leads Soft Elevation Private Limited, an international technology firm with more than 150 employees, offices in Chandigarh and Noida, and operations spanning the United States, Romania and France. The journey from unemployed software engineer to founder, however, began not with a grand vision but with a crisis. From job loss to a new beginning After completing his B.Tech from Bhai Gurdas Institute of Engineering and Technology (BGIET), Sangrur, Sandhu joined a software company as a Java developer and spent nine years building his technical expertise. Then came an unexpected setback. He lost his job. Another position followed, but only for a short period. Soon after, the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted businesses across the world, eliminating yet another …
