One Year Many Lessons

What happens when a group of students with zero investment, big dreams, and a pure “#Jugadu” spirit set out to build a startup? One Year, Many Lessons is not a story of instant success or perfect decisions. It is the honest journey of a student who stepped into building his first jugaadu startup without clarity, funding, or a roadmap, only curiosity, effort, and the courage to try. Set during college life and the pandemic, this book captures how small actions, late-night experiments, broken plans, and simple ideas slowly turned into real experience. Through friendships, mentors, mistakes, and moments of self-doubt, the author reflects on what it truly means to build something from scratch. The journey moves across filmmaking dreams, technical learning, teamwork, leadership, and the emotional weight of responsibility, showing how lessons often arrive before results, and clarity often comes after failure. This book is written for students, early professionals, creators, and anyone standing at the edge of uncertainty. It does not promise shortcuts or hype. Instead, it offers perspective, on learning by doing, on staying honest when things don’t work, and on why unfinished journeys still matter. If you have ever wondered whether starting small, failing quietly, or feeling lost could still lead to growth, One Year, Many Lessons may feel uncomfortably familiar, in the best way.