A Mumbai man accidentally transferred Rs 15,682 to an auto driver while rushing to a client meeting. What followed turned a disastrous day into a story he still remembers.
A Mumbai entrepreneur’s rush to an early-morning client meeting ended in a costly UPI mistake, and an unexpected act of honesty that later became the real story of the day. Shubham Gune, founder and CEO of Hinglish, said he accidentally transferred Rs 15,682 to an auto-rickshaw driver instead of Rs 156 while rushing to meet an international client who was in Mumbai for only a day.
In a LinkedIn post, Gune described a chaotic morning that began with a 7 am meeting and a growing sense that he was already behind schedule. Outside the building, he quickly opened Google Pay to pay for the auto ride. In his haste, he entered Rs 15,682 instead of Rs 156, completed the transaction, and hurried inside without checking the payment screen.
What followed, he wrote, felt like a complete collapse of the morning.
Gune said the client meeting turned into a disappointment and left him feeling he had lost a rare opportunity to make an impression. Frustrated by how the meeting had gone, he stepped back outside, only to discover that something else had gone wrong.
The auto driver, identified as Altaf, was still waiting at the spot where he had dropped him off. Altaf approached him and explained that there had been a problem with the payment.
Instead of keeping the money, the driver had already noticed the error and refunded the excess amount.
Gune said he urged Altaf to at least keep the Rs 156 fare he was actually owed for the ride, but the driver refused.
“He could see the kind of morning I was having,” Gune wrote, recalling Altaf’s response: “It’s the start of the day for both of us, sir.”
The LinkedIn post included screenshots of the UPI transactions showing both the mistaken payment and the refund sent back by the driver.
Then came the twist. Gune said that seven days after the failed meeting, the international client reached out again and decided to move forward with working together after all.
“The moment the news landed, my mind went straight back to that 7 am footpath,” he wrote, describing Altaf as someone who had seen him on one of his worst mornings and chosen to help without expecting anything in return.
As a gesture of gratitude, Gune later sent Altaf Rs 500, which included the fare the driver had declined to accept along with a small token of appreciation.
The post drew a flood of reactions from LinkedIn users. Many said the story stayed with them not because the client eventually came back, but because the driver had an opportunity to benefit from someone else’s mistake and chose not to.