India, June 6 -- An eye-opening post by a Bengaluru founder has detailed the extreme lengths he went to as a teenager to escape online prejudice. To get foreign clients to pay him fairly for his design work, the then-17-year-old fabricated a persona hailing from the Netherlands, complete with a Western name and accent. The workaround allowed him to earn $50 per thumbnail and achieve a steady monthly income of Rs. 80,000. While his disguise opened doors that his Indian identity closed, the founder emphasised that it was his actual skill, not just the fake identity, that kept those international clients paying.

Shirsh Bajpai, co-founder at AevyTV and better known across social media as PapaOcus, shared his story on LinkedIn. "At 17, I pret...