The Story of How I built Techiegen In College

Surendar, 2026

In 2020, the world shut down. Universities closed. Cities went silent. Plans dissolved overnight.
For many, it felt like life was being paused. For me, strangely, it felt like it was beginning.

With college closed and nowhere to go, I found myself sitting at home with time — something I had never truly had before. Instead of waiting for normal to return, I turned inward. I began learning obsessively. Ten hours a day. Sometimes more.

Business models. Startups. Digital trends. Webinars from founders across the world.

The world was accelerating toward digital transformation, and I didn’t want to just watch it happen — I wanted to understand it.

But learning alone started to feel isolating.

So I created a simple WhatsApp group with a few friends and began sharing every valuable webinar and insight I found. I didn’t expect much. It was just a way to stay connected.

Then something unexpected happened.

The group started growing. Friends added friends. Strangers joined through referrals. Within weeks, that small circle became a network of nearly 1,000 students. For the first time, I felt momentum.

I built a website — randomly named after my old Reddit username — not because it was strategic, but because I wanted to make it real. I assembled a small team. We were young, excited, and convinced that energy was enough.

It wasn’t.

We disagreed on everything. Roles were unclear. Expectations were unspoken. Egos surfaced. What started as collaboration slowly turned into friction. Eventually, the team dissolved.

That was the first time I confronted a painful truth:
I could attract people. I could generate ideas. But I did not know how to lead.

So I began studying something I had never paid attention to before, people management. Communication. Conflict. Structure. Still, I had no clear vision of what this growing community could become. I had built an audience, but I didn’t know how to turn attention into impact.

Yet, the ambition inside me refused to quiet down.

One night in 2021, I woke up with an idea.

What if this became an app?

The thought wouldn’t leave me. My friend and I used to travel to our college incubation center, taking public transport during uncertain times because we believed exposure mattered more than comfort.

They gave us a small workspace. It wasn’t glamorous. But to us, it felt like legitimacy.

Inside that room, I obsessed over one question:
How do you make learning addictive?

The answer came in a format my generation already understood — memes.

What if there was a social media platform, like Instagram, but every piece of content made you smarter? Learning disguised as entertainment.

The idea excited me deeply. It felt fresh. It felt scalable. It felt like purpose.

I formed another team, mostly juniors, mostly friends. I even hired an old friend who ran a software agency to build our MVP.

This time would be different, I thought. It wasn’t.

Because we were friends first and teammates second, boundaries blurred. Accountability weakened. Conflicts became personal. Structure was missing again.

When we tested the MVP, the results were discouraging. Users didn’t engage the way we expected. Feedback was blunt. Slowly, the team fractured. And with it, more friendships faded. That hurt more than the product failure.

By 2022, something surprising happened. Despite the internal chaos, the community had grown to nearly 10,000 students across India.

I threw myself into offline efforts.

I organized college events. Conducted workshops. Spoke at seminars.

Public speaking terrified me. I used to avoid even raising my hand in class. But I forced myself onto stages because I knew growth required discomfort.

In April 2022, with the help of another junior, we rebuilt the app from scratch. We launched it in the middle of a college event. The response was electric.

Thousands of installs poured in on day one. Within weeks, we crossed 10,000 installs. Around campus, the app became the talk of the town.

For a brief moment, it felt like validation. But reality is not measured in downloads. It is measured in retention.

Users installed the app. Few stayed. Engagement dropped. Activity slowed. The numbers that once excited us began quietly shrinking. Inside the team, tension resurfaced. Old patterns repeated. Disagreements turned into exits. Eventually, the team dissolved again.

And this time, I didn’t fight it.

I was exhausted, not physically, but emotionally.

In three years, I had built communities, launched products, assembled teams, lost teams, strengthened relationships, and broken some.

By the end of it all, I was no longer in touch with anyone from those early days. That part still feels heavy.

But I also feel gratitude.

Because every one of them was part of my formation.

Failure did not come in one dramatic collapse.

It came quietly, through declining metrics, unanswered messages, fading enthusiasm. And in that silence, I learned more than I ever did during the growth. I learned that ideas are cheap, but execution demands discipline.
That leadership is not charisma, it is clarity.

That friendship and business require boundaries. That ambition without structure burns fast. Eventually, I chose pause over persistence.

I applied to universities abroad. I moved to the UK. I stepped into a new environment, away from the noise of my first entrepreneurial chapter. Some people would look at that story and see something unfinished. I see foundation.

Because that startup may not have scaled. But it built me.

It forced me to confront my weaknesses. It exposed my impatience. It sharpened my resilience. It humbled my ego.

Not every venture becomes a company. Some become character.

And that, I’ve realized, is sometimes the more important outcome.