I'm Ayush, a builder from India. Got my first computer in 2010, broke it 47 times, and never stopped experimenting since. From disk partitions in 6th class to products at Jio, curiosity has been the only constant.
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Somewhere in India, probably breaking something to learn how it works
I didn't start with a plan. I started with a Micromax dongle, a 2G SIM recharged for ₹199 to get 2GB of data, and a curiosity I still can't explain. In 6th class, I partitioned my hard disk just to see my name "Chiku" on a drive. I locked my own BIOS. I made fake viruses from bash commands I copied off the internet. My friends thought I was a hacker. I just liked breaking things to see how they worked. That kid never left.
Got my first computer in 2010. No broadband, just a Micromax dongle with ₹199 recharge for 2GB. That was the entire internet budget. I was never a fan of games, but I was always breaking things. Partitioned disks in 6th class just to see my name "Chiku" on a drive. Locked my own BIOS. Made fake viruses from bash commands. In my friend circle, I was the computer genius, the go-to guy whenever someone's PC died.
Then I made my first Facebook account and immediately wanted to build something. Landed on Blogger and created "Ayushexperiments.blogger.com" (dumb enough to delete it later). When my family got their first Android phone, I wanted to make an app. All I knew was printing Hello World in Java. Teacher said learn Kotlin. My computer couldn't handle it. So after asking Google a thousand times, I discovered PWAs, converted one to an APK using AppGeyser, and installed it on every phone I could find. Nobody used it. First lesson: don't build without asking users. Then I moved to Varanasi for 12th grade without a computer or phone. The experimenting kid was forced on a break. But the itch? It never went away.
July 2019. Co-founded ThinkBlueBrain with my best friend. Simple idea: 10 years QnA for ICSE & CBSE students. Built our first website on WordPress localhost, bought Hostinger with pocket money, designed a logo on Canva, and gave friends titles like "VP of Hiring" and "CTO." We were on top of the moon. So much so that I failed my first semester maths. Then COVID hit and our platform died overnight. Who needs question papers when exams are open book from home?
During lockdown, I discovered cold DMs through Varun Maya. Copy-pasted his template, changed the name, and hit send on LinkedIn with 100 followers. Deep Kakad said yes first. Then KD, Ajay, and others followed. For a tier 3-4 college kid, getting FAANG people to show up was a dream nobody dared to dream. We pulled it off. 20+ guests in 15 days of continuous events. But I had to part ways with ThinkBlueBrain and my best friend. Wasn't mature enough to handle it gracefully. Three months of being clueless, but the blood on my tongue for building things wouldn't go away. So I started again.
"Not all good things stay the same. Sometimes you break it so you can rebuild yourself."
Founded SkillValley. First idea? A 21-year-old training corporate employees in their 40s and 50s. Hilarious. Failed in 3 months. Then colleges started asking me to bring mentors, so I let them white-label our sessions while I ran everything behind the scenes. Grew to 20+ colleges, 5,000+ community members, and 100+ mentors.
Launched courses on Full Stack Dev and DSA. Zero enrollments. Too many free alternatives. Biggest setback of my life. But the mentors I'd built relationships with pushed me to try again with focus. I closed everything and picked one problem: students have zero clue how things work in real companies. Started cohort programs where students built real products from 0 to market launch. Last cohort in 2024 got 1,190+ registrations for just 35 seats. In 4 cohorts, we placed 120+ students with an average CTC of 5.5 lakhs.
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"I closed everything and picked just one problem."
While running SkillValley through college, side gigs kept me alive. First client paid me ₹4,800 for an agency website. Did design gigs, made trailers and launch videos, which accidentally landed me video editing clients too. By March 2023, I was juggling design, WordPress, a product internship at AudioKumbh, and SkillValley. Everything collapsed. Income dropped to zero in 15 days.
Got referred for a WordPress dev role at ₹45K/month. Highest I'd ever earned. Laid off in 3 months. Then a friend trained me in ghostwriting, something I didn't even know existed. That first agency gig opened every door. Worked with top founders and creators until my writing got sharp enough to stop chasing clients. On 23rd November, joined Appurv Gupta as branding manager. January 2024, joined Jio because SkillValley needed offline scale I couldn't provide. Now I build products at Jio and keep experimenting on the side. The keeda is very much alive.
Every single thing I've built, from ThinkBlueBrain to SkillValley to my first client project, started with zero knowledge. You figure it out by doing, not preparing.
My first app? Nobody used it. First QnA platform? COVID killed it. Courses? Zero enrollments. Every failure taught me: ask people what they need before building what you think is cool.
From partitioning disks in 6th class to building products at Jio, the itch to experiment, break things, and build something new has been the one constant. I don't think it's going away.
I'm always up for a conversation, whether it's a product idea, a collaboration, or just swapping notes on what we're building.
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