I Wasn’t Who I Thought I Was : Deepti Krishna
From Class 9 to Class 12: The Story I Never Told
A story about curiosity, failure, friendship, rebuilding and finding purpose.
"A marksheet can measure an exam. It can never measure a person's potential."
By Deepti Krishna : July 2026
People often ask me how I built DEEcode. Some ask how I got into international programs. Others ask how I started working on research, leadership, entrepreneurship, and eventually KLYRR. The truth is... None of those stories begin with success. They begin with a loud, talkative girl sitting in a classroom in a small town in Bihar, who had absolutely no idea what she wanted to become.
PART I • The Girl Before Everything Changed
If you had met me in Class 9, "serious" is probably the last word you would have used to describe me.
If you walked into my classroom back then, there was a good chance you'd hear my voice before you saw me. I was always talking. Usually with Shristi or Sakshi, sometimes about homework, more often about absolutely nothing. More than once, our teachers separated us, convinced that changing our seats would somehow make us quieter. It never really worked. Somehow, we always found our way back to each other.
If there was a dance performance happening in school, I wanted to be part of it. I would practice for days, imagining myself on stage. Sometimes I made it to the final performance. Sometimes I didn't. There were moments when I was replaced because someone else danced better. It hurt every single time. Yet when the next event came around, I signed up again without thinking twice.
PERSONALITY : Talkative
FAVOURITE : Dancing
BEST FRIENDS : Shristi & Sakshi
BIGGEST DREAM : Unknown...
Around the same time, another habit quietly entered my life. I started spending hours reading things that had nothing to do with school. Artificial intelligence. Startups. Psychology. Education. Students from different parts of the world building organisations while they were still teenagers. Every article led to another. Every video answered one question and created five more. My classroom stayed the same, but my world kept getting bigger.
"The biggest thing Class 9 gave me wasn't knowledge. It was curiosity. And curiosity has a strange way of changing an ordinary life."
PART II • Class 10 & The Beginning of DEEcode
Class 10 changed the atmosphere overnight. The same corridors suddenly felt heavier. Every conversation somehow circled back to board exams. Teachers reminded us daily. Relatives asked the same question every time they visited. Even neighbours seemed strangely invested in the marks of a sixteen-year-old. For the first time, it felt as though an entire future could be reduced to a single percentage. For months, one question kept repeating itself inside my head. "What if I built something of my own?"
STATUS : Initializing...
DATE : November 2024
FUNDING : ₹0
TEAM : Almost None
EXPERIENCE : 0%
MISSION : Give young people a voice.
In November 2024, I stopped waiting for the "perfect time." I started DEEcode. Looking back, it sounds exciting. At that time, it was terrifying. I had no funding. No roadmap. No experience. No big team. No guarantee that anyone would ever read what we published. But I knew one thing. Young people deserved a place where their stories, ideas, and voices mattered. So I started anyway.
The first few weeks were messy. I learned how to write articles. How to edit. How to recruit contributors. How to lead people. How to manage deadlines. How to solve problems that no textbook had ever prepared me for. I made mistakes almost every day. Then I fixed them. And then I made new ones. Little by little... DEEcode stopped being just an idea. It slowly became a real platform. Contributors started joining. Readers started discovering our work. Without realizing it, DEEcode became much more than an organization. It became my safe place.
Timeline
📖 Class 10 Begins
📚 Board Preparation Continues
💡 An idea refuses to leave my mind
🚀 November 2024 • DEEcode was born
🌍 First contributors begin joining
"I didn't start DEEcode because I knew how to build an organization. I started it because I couldn't ignore the feeling that there had to be something more than chasing marks."
At that moment... I thought building DEEcode would be the hardest thing I would ever do. I had no idea that the real challenge wasn't waiting outside. It was only a few months away. 13 May 2025. The day that would change the way I saw myself.
PART III • The Day Everything Almost Fell Apart
13 May 2025. I still remember that day. The day my Class 10 board results were announced. For months, everyone around me had treated these exams as though they would decide my entire future. When the results finally came... I wasn't happy. I wasn't proud. I was disappointed. Soon after, the comments began. Some compared me to other students. Some questioned my abilities. Some made me feel like I wasn't intelligent enough. It felt as if one number had suddenly become my entire identity. For the first time in my life... I genuinely started believing that maybe I wasn't good enough.
EVENT : Class 10 Board Results
EMOTIONAL STATE : Broken
CONFIDENCE : Critically Low
SELF-WORTH : Questioning Everything
That period became one of the darkest chapters of my life. Around the same time, I also experienced sexual harassment. It shattered whatever confidence I still had left. I stopped trusting people. I stopped talking to many around me. I questioned myself constantly. For a long time, I carried fear, guilt, confusion, and silence that I never spoke about publicly. Outside, people only saw another student. Inside, I was trying to survive emotions I didn't know how to explain.
Later, I finally discovered something that explained years of struggle. I was diagnosed with ADHD. Suddenly, so many things made sense. Why I struggled to focus. Why I constantly overthought. Why my brain never seemed to slow down. It didn't magically solve my problems. But it helped me stop blaming myself for everything.
"Sometimes the hardest battle isn't proving yourself to the world. It's convincing yourself that your worth was never defined by one result."
Even while everything around me felt like it was falling apart... DEEcode quietly kept growing. And without realizing it... It was slowly rebuilding me too.
PART IV • Rebuilding Through Class 11
Class 11 wasn't the year everything became easy. It was the year I decided to keep moving anyway. Instead of letting rejection define me... I became obsessed with learning. I spent countless nights researching universities, startups, artificial intelligence, education, entrepreneurship and product design. The more I learned... The more ambitious my dreams became.
FOCUS : Research
PROJECT : KLYRR
STATUS : Building From Scratch
During Class 11, I started building KLYRR. The idea came from my own struggles. As an international student, I realized how confusing and expensive the university application process could be. Students without expensive counsellors often had no roadmap. I wanted to change that. So I began designing an AI-powered platform that could simplify international college applications for students like me. Every feature started with one simple question. "What problem am I trying to solve?"
At the same time, I applied to program after program. Many applications ended with rejection emails. Each one hurt. But every rejection also forced me to improve. Better essays. Better projects. Better ideas. Better leadership. Little by little... The version of me that once doubted herself slowly started disappearing.
Class 11 Timeline
💻 Deep research begins
🤖 AI & Entrepreneurship exploration
🚀 KLYRR starts taking shape
📩 Multiple applications submitted
❌ Many rejections received
📚 Continuous learning never stopped
"Rejections didn't end my story. They quietly became the training ground for everything that came next."
PART V • Class 12, A New Beginning
By the time Class 12 began, I wasn't the same person who had cried over a marksheet a year earlier. The fears were still there. The ADHD didn't suddenly disappear. Life didn't magically become easier. But something inside me had changed. Instead of asking, "Am I good enough?" I had started asking, "How can I become better than I was yesterday?" That single shift changed everything.
I continued building DEEcode. I kept improving KLYRR. I continued researching artificial intelligence, startups, education, product design and international admissions. Every rejection from Class 11 slowly became experience. Every late night became preparation. Every mistake became a lesson. Eventually... The emails that once began with "Unfortunately..." started becoming "Congratulations."
Those acceptances meant much more than certificates. They reminded me that one examination never had the power to decide my future. The girl who once believed she wasn't smart enough... was now working alongside students from different countries, building projects she once thought were impossible.
DEEcode slowly grew into a platform read across more than fifty countries. Students from different backgrounds started contributing. People I had never met began believing in an idea that had started inside a small room with nothing more than curiosity. At the same time... KLYRR stopped being just another notebook idea. It slowly became the startup I had dreamed about building. Looking back now... Every difficult moment somehow became part of the foundation.
"Sometimes life doesn't reward you immediately. Sometimes it quietly prepares you for opportunities you can't even imagine yet."
The Story I Never Told
When people look at my profile today... They see DEEcode. They see KLYRR. They see international programs. Scholarships. Research. Leadership. Projects. But they don't usually see the girl who questioned her own worth after one examination. They don't see the countless nights spent doubting herself. They don't see the failures. The rejection emails. The silent battles. Or the moments when giving up felt easier than continuing.
If there's one thing these four years have taught me, it's this. Life rarely follows the timeline we create for it. Sometimes your lowest moments become the beginning of your greatest opportunities. Sometimes your biggest failure redirects you toward the life you were actually meant to build. And sometimes... The person you spend years trying to become... is quietly being built during the days you think you're falling apart.
Thank You For Reading.
This isn't the end of my story. I'm still learning. Still failing. Still building. Still dreaming. And hopefully... This is only Chapter One.
"The story I never told... became the story that shaped me."
From Class 9 to Class 12: The Story I Never Told
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