The project I almost didn't ship.

The phone call that started it

Last year, my dad's friend called. His son had just cleared JEE Advanced and paid a counsellor ₹10,000 for JOSAA help. What did they get? A recycled PDF of the previous year's seat matrix.

This kid had prepared for two grueling years, and he was about to pick his college based on a sorted spreadsheet. I sat down with him and explained what IIT Bombay actually feels like from the inside — the real placement realities, the branch cultures, the things you don't find written anywhere. At the end, he said: "Bhaiya, I just needed to talk to someone who was actually there."

That line stayed with me.

The code that had been sitting unshipped

During college, I had actually built a platform to solve this exact problem. The intent was simple: create a community where aspirants could get 1-on-1 guidance from real college seniors. But like many side projects, life got busy, time passed, and the code just sat unshipped.

With JOSAA Counselling just weeks away, the guilt finally kicked in. Thousands of students are about to be in that exact same spot again — rank in hand, no one real to talk to. So I pushed it live. The goal: build a supportive community so no student has to rely on a generic spreadsheet or an outdated Quora thread. Just an honest conversation with someone who actually lived it.

What's under the hood

• Live video sessions built on Agora RTC, with scheduling and booking flows.
• End-to-end encrypted chat between mentors and mentees.
• An AI engine for personalized exam guidance, trained on session-driven data.
• Full stack: Next.js · Node.js · MongoDB, designed, built, and operated solo.

What it taught me

That distribution is a product problem too — every one of those first users arrived organically, which forced the onboarding, pricing, and trust design to carry the growth. And that shipping late beats not shipping. The line from that phone call keeps the direction clear.