**

Why I Left a Big 4 Career to Start Over From Zero

Personal Journey · 9 min read

There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a resignation letter once you've printed it and it's just sitting there on the desk, waiting for a signature. Mine sat for four days. Four days of telling myself I was still deciding, when some part of me already had. I remember that far more clearly than I remember what the letter actually said.

I qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 2011, with an ICAI gold medal, after three years of articleship that taught me to read a balance sheet at eleven at night on no sleep and still catch the one number that didn't tie out. I thought that was the hard part behind me. It wasn't. It was the entrance fee. A few years later I went back and finished an LLB as well, mostly because I kept running into tax positions in tribunal matters where I wished I understood the litigation side of the argument as well as I understood the numbers side of it. The law degree wasn't part of any five-year plan, it came out of being irritated at my own blind spot.

By 2016, deep inside a Big 4 firm, I'd also picked up certifications in International Taxation and in Transfer Pricing & International Taxation through the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI). None of that was resume-building for its own sake. Each one came from a specific case where I felt one certification short of being fully useful to a client, and went and closed that gap. By then I had a corner of a good career already built, the kind of role where your calendar fills up automatically and your opinion gets asked in rooms you used to only observe from the back. My mother had stopped introducing me as "the CA in the family" and started introducing me as something closer to "settled." In an Indian household, that word carries more weight than any designation ever will. It made the next decision much harder to say out loud at home.

The Year I Stopped Being Useful to Myself

Somewhere around 2016, I started noticing something I couldn't quite name at the time. Clients had begun asking for me by name in meetings where, technically, my job was to sit two seats back and let a partner run the conversation. I'd answer a transfer pricing query on the spot, and afterwards someone from the client side would quietly ask for my number instead of the firm's. That should have felt flattering. Mostly, it made me uneasy, the way it feels when you realise a room trusts you more than it trusts the letterhead you're wearing.

I didn't leave because of one bad meeting or one unfair appraisal. People who tell that story are usually simplifying it for an interview. The truth is slower and less cinematic: for about a year, I kept solving problems that belonged to someone else's vision of what good work looked like, and I got tired of being excellent at a version of the job that wasn't mine.

2017\. A Rented Desk. A Landline That Rang Twice.

I started Steadfast Business Consulting (SBC) in 2017 out of a small office in Hyderabad, one that, in the first few months, had more furniture than clients. The landline rang exactly twice in the first week, and one of those calls was a wrong number. I also remember writing the rent cheque for that office and doing quiet arithmetic about how many months of savings that gave me before I'd have to admit something to my family that I wasn't ready to admit yet. Some evenings the silence in that office felt like freedom. Other evenings it just felt like silence.

I had a law degree, a CA membership number, two ICAI specialist certifications, and, this is the part I underestimate when I tell this story too quickly, no institutional safety net at all. ICAI had trained me superbly to be technically right. It had trained me for almost nothing about being commercially responsible for my own decisions, which is a very different discipline, and one nobody warns you you'll need until the day you're signing a lease with your own name on it instead of a firm's. You can see how that firm has grown since, on the SBC India site.

What the Big 4 Years Didn't Teach Me, On Purpose

I don't say this as a complaint. Large firms are built to produce excellent technicians, and mine did exactly that for me. But there's a particular kind of comfort you get used to inside a big institution: someone else prices the engagement, someone else decides which clients are worth keeping, someone else absorbs the risk if a position doesn't hold up. You get to be brilliant without ever being fully exposed. I'm still grateful for those years, they gave me the craft. The nerve, I had to find on my own.

Starting SBC meant giving up that comfort on purpose. The first time a prospective client pushed back hard on a fee I'd quoted, genuinely pushed back, not the polite negotiating you do inside a big firm where the number was never really yours to defend, I remember going home that evening and rewriting the proposal three times before I sent it. Not because the number was wrong. Because I'd never had to personally stand behind a number before.

That's the shift nobody prepares you for. Not the market, not the competition, the discomfort of being the last name on your own decisions.

The Years That Quietly Proved the Bet Right

I'm cautious about award lists, they can read as self-congratulation if you lead with them, so I've never wanted them at the front of this story. But there's a moment, a few years into building SBC, when the outside world started independently confirming something I'd only privately hoped was true. In 2022, the Times Group named me an Under 40 Achiever, and in January 2023 I spoke at TEDxKalbadevi in Mumbai, sharing my own journey and, for the first time, explaining what transfer pricing even means to an audience that had never heard the term.

Along the way, my work started reaching wider audiences: an expert opinion I co-wrote with my colleague CA Praneeth Narahari on a Supreme Court transfer pricing precedent, published by Taxmann in 2023, and a 2024 feature in LexisNexis MENA's Gulf Tax edition. Recognition followed: ITR World Tax listed SBC as a notable transfer pricing firm in 2024 and, in its 2026 edition, ranked our India transfer pricing practice Tier 2 and named me a Notable Practitioner. In October 2026, our UAE firm, SBC Tax Consulting, won Tax Innovator of the Year and Tax Technology Firm of the Year at ITR's Middle East Tax Awards, and ITR has shortlisted us at its Asia-Pacific Tax Awards, including for India Transfer Pricing Advisory Firm of the Year and India Tax Disputes Advisory Firm of the Year. None of those were the goal when I was writing that rent cheque in 2017. They were just proof, arriving slowly, that the bet had been a sound one.

Somewhere in the middle of that stretch, ICAI itself invited me onto its Centre of Excellence for International Taxation, and later its CITAX panel making pre-Budget representations to the Finance Ministry, which meant the same institute that trained me was now asking for my input on the rules the next generation of CAs would be trained under. That felt like the story closing a small, satisfying loop.

Where That Rented Desk Eventually Led

Today SBC works with 350+ multinational clients across India, the UAE, and the United States, with a team of 270+ professionals led from our Hyderabad headquarters and our Gulf hub in Dubai. In January 2026 we closed a pre-Series A round at a ₹100 crore valuation. If you'd told the version of me writing that rent cheque in 2017 where this would go, I don't think I'd have believed you, and I say that as someone who is, by training, supposed to be good at forecasting.

I owe a great deal to the first clients who trusted a firm with no track record, and to the first colleagues who chose an uncertain desk over a safer one. They made a braver bet than I did.

None of it happened in a straight line, and I'm suspicious of any story that makes it sound like it did. You can see more of that build-out on our experience page and ventures page, including how our Dubai entity, SBC Tax Consulting LLC, took shape from 2023, and how the technology arm behind it, TP Doc Gen AI, grew out of exactly the kind of repetitive work I used to do by hand in that first office. What I can tell you plainly is that none of it started with confidence. It started with a resignation letter that sat on a desk for four days, and a decision I made anyway.

If You're Standing Where I Was

If you're a CA reading this with your own version of that letter sitting somewhere, a draft email, a half-finished business plan, a number you keep running in your head at 2 a.m., I won't pretend I know your situation. But I'll say the one thing I wish someone had said to me plainly in 2016: your technical skill is not the question here. Most senior CAs I know are exceptional technicians. The actual question is whether you're willing to sign your own name to a number nobody is going to double-check for you.

That's not a comfortable question. It wasn't for me either. I just decided the discomfort was worth finding out the answer to.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do so few Chartered Accountants in India start their own firms?

The CA curriculum and articleship, regulated by ICAI, build outstanding technical skill in audit, compliance, and taxation, but very little exposure to pricing, hiring, or commercial risk-taking, skills most CAs only learn once they're already running a practice.

What credentials help a Chartered Accountant specialise in international taxation and transfer pricing?

Beyond the core CA qualification, ICAI's specialist certifications in International Taxation and in Transfer Pricing & International Taxation, along with practical litigation exposure (an LLB or Advocate qualification helps here), and forensic audit training for dispute-heavy engagements, build a well-rounded international tax practice.

How long did it take Steadfast Business Consulting LLP to scale, and what recognition has it received?

Roughly eight years, from a single office in Hyderabad in 2017 to a firm of 270+ professionals serving 350+ MNE clients, reaching a ₹100 crore valuation after its January 2026 pre-Series A round, and earning recognition including a Tier 2 ranking for transfer pricing in India in ITR World Tax 2026, two 2026 ITR Middle East Tax Awards won by SBC Tax Consulting (Tax Innovator of the Year and Tax Technology Firm of the Year), and shortlistings at the 2026 ITR Asia-Pacific Tax Awards.

Continue the Conversation

This is the first in a series on the thinking behind building a top-tier tax and transfer pricing advisory in India. The next piece looks at the real difference between a CA who practices and one who builds an institution. You can also read more about CA Mithilesh Reddy's background or start a conversation with the SBC team.

**

Why I Left a Big 4 Career to Start Over From Zero

There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a resignation letter once you've printed it and it's just sitting there on the desk, waiting for a signature. Mine sat for four days. I remember that far more clearly than I remember what the letter actually said.

I qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 2007, after three years of articleship that taught me to read a balance sheet at eleven at night on no sleep and still catch the one number that didn't tie out. I thought that was the hard part behind me. It wasn't. It was the entrance fee. A few years later I went back and finished an LLB as well, mostly because I kept running into tax positions in tribunal matters where I wished I understood the litigation side of the argument as well as I understood the numbers side of it. Qualifying as an Advocate wasn't part of any five-year plan - it came out of being irritated at my own blind spot.

By 2016, nine years into my CA career and deep inside a Big 4 firm, I'd also picked up certifications in International Taxation and in Transfer Pricing & International Taxation through the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), along with a certification in Forensic Audit. None of that was resume-building for its own sake. Each one came from a specific case where I felt one certification short of being fully useful to a client, and went and closed that gap. By then I had a corner of a good career already built - the kind of role where your calendar fills up automatically and your opinion gets asked in rooms you used to only observe from the back. My mother had stopped introducing me as "the CA in the family" and started introducing me as something closer to "settled." In an Indian household, that word carries more weight than any designation ever will.

The Year I Stopped Being Useful to Myself

Somewhere around 2016, I started noticing something I couldn't quite name at the time. Clients had begun asking for me by name in meetings where, technically, my job was to sit two seats back and let a partner run the conversation. I'd answer a transfer pricing query on the spot, and afterwards someone from the client side would quietly ask for my number instead of the firm's. That should have felt flattering. Mostly, it made me uneasy - the way it feels when you realise a room trusts you more than it trusts the letterhead you're wearing.

I didn't leave because of one bad meeting or one unfair appraisal. People who tell that story are usually simplifying it for an interview. The truth is slower and less cinematic: for about a year, I kept solving problems that belonged to someone else's vision of what good work looked like, and I got tired of being excellent at a version of the job that wasn't mine.

2017\. A Rented Desk. A Landline That Rang Twice.

I started Steadfast Business Consulting in 2017 out of a small office in Hyderabad - one that, in the first few months, had more furniture than clients. The landline rang exactly twice in the first week, and one of those calls was a wrong number. I also remember writing the rent cheque for that office and doing quiet arithmetic about how many months of savings that gave me before I'd have to admit something to my family that I wasn't ready to admit yet.

I had a law degree, a CA membership number, three ICAI specialist certifications, and - this is the part I underestimate when I tell this story too quickly - no institutional safety net at all. ICAI had trained me superbly to be technically right. It had trained me for almost nothing about being commercially responsible for my own decisions, which is a very different discipline, and one nobody warns you you'll need until the day you're signing a lease with your own name on it instead of a firm's. You can see how that firm has grown since, on the SBC India site.

What the Big 4 Years Didn't Teach Me - On Purpose

I don't say this as a complaint. Large firms are built to produce excellent technicians, and mine did exactly that for me. But there's a particular kind of comfort you get used to inside a big institution: someone else prices the engagement, someone else decides which clients are worth keeping, someone else absorbs the risk if a position doesn't hold up. You get to be brilliant without ever being fully exposed.

Starting SBC meant giving that up on purpose. The first time a prospective client pushed back hard on a fee I'd quoted - genuinely pushed back, not the polite negotiating you do inside a big firm where the number was never really yours to defend - I remember going home that evening and rewriting the proposal three times before I sent it. Not because the number was wrong. Because I'd never had to personally stand behind a number before.

_That's the shift nobody prepares you for. Not the market, not the competition - the discomfort of being the last name on your own decisions._

The Years That Quietly Proved the Bet Right

I'm cautious about award lists - they can read as self-congratulation if you lead with them, so I've never wanted them at the front of this story. But there's a moment, a few years into building SBC, when the outside world started independently confirming something I'd only privately hoped was true. In 2022, I was named in Times Group's 40 Under 40 as one of the brightest young entrepreneurs, and spoke at TEDx Kalbadevi in Mumbai the same year - the first time I'd had to explain what transfer pricing even means to an audience that had never heard the term.

The recognitions kept coming as the firm grew: featured practitioner status in LexisNexis MENA's Gulf Tax edition in 2024, an expert opinion on a Supreme Court transfer pricing precedent picked up by Taxmann the same year, and then, in back-to-back years, ITR World Tax recognising SBC first as a Notable Transfer Pricing Firm (2024), then Best Firm of the Year for Transfer Pricing in India (2025), and Best Tax Dispute Advisory Firm for the APAC region in 2026. None of those were the goal when I was writing that rent cheque in 2017. They were just proof, arriving slowly, that the bet had been a sound one.

Somewhere in the middle of that stretch, ICAI itself invited me onto its Centre of Excellence for International Taxation, and later its CITAX panel making pre-Budget representations to the Finance Ministry - which meant the same institute that trained me was now asking for my input on the rules the next generation of CAs would be trained under. That felt like the story closing a small, satisfying loop.

Where That Rented Desk Eventually Led

Today SBC works with 350+ multinational clients across India, the UAE, and the United States, with 270+ professionals across offices in Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Dubai, and New York. In January 2026 we closed a pre-Series A round at a ₹100 crore valuation. If you'd told the version of me writing that rent cheque in 2017 where this would go, I don't think I'd have believed you - and I say that as someone who is, by training, supposed to be good at forecasting.

None of it happened in a straight line, and I'm suspicious of any story that makes it sound like it did. You can see more of that build-out on our experience page and ventures page, including how our Dubai entity, SBC Tax Consulting LLC, took shape from 2023, and how the technology arm behind it, TP Doc Gen AI, grew out of exactly the kind of repetitive work I used to do by hand in that first office. What I can tell you plainly is that none of it started with confidence. It started with a resignation letter that sat on a desk for four days, and a decision I made anyway.

If You're Standing Where I Was

If you're a CA reading this with your own version of that letter sitting somewhere - a draft email, a half-finished business plan, a number you keep running in your head at 2 a.m. - I won't pretend I know your situation. But I'll say the one thing I wish someone had said to me plainly in 2016: your technical skill is not the question here. Most senior CAs I know are exceptional technicians. The actual question is whether you're willing to sign your own name to a number nobody is going to double-check for you.

That's not a comfortable question. It wasn't for me either. I just decided the discomfort was worth finding out the answer to.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do so few Chartered Accountants in India start their own firms?

The CA curriculum and articleship, regulated by ICAI, build outstanding technical skill in audit, compliance, and taxation, but very little exposure to pricing, hiring, or commercial risk-taking - skills most CAs only learn once they're already running a practice.

What credentials help a Chartered Accountant specialise in international taxation and transfer pricing?

Beyond the core CA qualification, ICAI's specialist certifications in International Taxation and in Transfer Pricing & International Taxation, along with practical litigation exposure (an LLB or Advocate qualification helps here), and forensic audit training for dispute-heavy engagements, build a well-rounded international tax practice.

How long did it take Steadfast Business Consulting LLP to scale, and what recognition has it received?

Roughly eight years - from a single office in Hyderabad in 2017 to a firm of 270+ professionals serving 350+ MNE clients, reaching a ₹100 crore valuation after its January 2026 pre-Series A round, and earning recognition including ITR World Tax's Best Firm of the Year for Transfer Pricing (2025) and Best Tax Dispute Advisory Firm, APAC (2026).

Continue the Conversation

This is the first in a series on the thinking behind building a top-tier tax and transfer pricing advisory in India. The next piece looks at the real difference between a CA who practices and one who builds an institution. You can also read more about Mithilesh's background or start a conversation with the SBC team.

_Editorial note: This article reflects general professional perspective and personal reflection. It is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute tax, legal, or financial advice for any specific matter - please consult directly with a qualified professional about your own facts and circumstances. Any client or matter scenarios described are illustrative composites, with identifying details changed or generalised to protect confidentiality; they do not describe a specific, identifiable client, case, or engagement._