The story behind
My Library App.

Years ago, in high school, I had a maths teacher who could make anyone fall in love with the subject — even people who hated numbers. He was humble, soft-spoken, the kind of person you instantly want to protect from a world that's too loud for him.

Long after I left his coaching, I heard he had finally opened his own institute. I thought — let me build him a small website. Something simple, so when students search for coaching nearby, his name comes up first. A small thank-you, in code.

I called him to surprise him. Instead, he surprised me. He said his coaching had shut down — a liquor shop offered the landlord more rent than he ever could. I sat there silently. A good man, pushed out by a bottle.

That moment didn't become an app yet. But it laid the very first brick.

When I was preparing for JEE, libraries were home. I knew the smell of old wood, the buzz of cheap tube-lights, the small wars over a favourite seat by the window.

But I also knew the loneliness. The lack of communication. The non-competitive air. The absence of guidance. The fees written on pen and paper. Attendance crossed off in a register that nobody really read.

Almost 98% of libraries still run that way — manually. Pen, paper, cash, confusion. And the one person who suffers the most isn't the owner — it's the student.

Most competitors build for owners, for revenue, for the business side. I wanted to build for students first. Because when students are happy, owners are happy. Growth becomes a side-effect of doing the right thing.

What you see today isn't the first version. It's the 5th. Or the 6th. Maybe the 7th — I've genuinely lost count. There were apps I built for weeks that died in a single error. There were features I spent entire days on, only to revert everything before going to sleep.

There were nights I changed the entire database — and then changed it again. Two days lost. Frustration stacked on frustration.

My family doesn't come from a coding background. They understand business and tech in a general way, but watching me sit in front of a laptop for hours felt strange to them. I got scolded. ‘What is he even doing?' ‘This business stuff doesn't work — remember the coding boom? Most companies shut down.'

I'd just smile and say — you'll see.

I bought the Google Play developer account from money I had been collecting for years — for ‘something useful, someday.'

Every rupee that has gone into this app is mine. The domain, the developer accounts, the tools, the tiny upgrades — all of it.

I never asked my parents. I never borrowed from a friend. Not because I'm proud — but because I never wanted anyone, ever, to be able to say they ‘owe' something to this dream. This had to be mine. Cleanly. Fully.

I tried publishing the app on Google Play. It didn't go through. Address proof issues. Document verification. Forms. Re-uploads. Replies that took weeks.

It took 2 full months to gather the exact documents Google asked for. Two months of chasing paperwork while the app sat ready, waiting.

Honestly? I almost lost the patience to even open the laptop. There were days I just stared at the screen and closed it again.

This person was my closest friend. On paper, they were the co-founder of this app — although the truth is, I wrote every single line of code myself. What they gave me was bigger than code. They were the moral support. The best friend who was eventually going to step in and build this with me.

And then that person was gone.

I won't dress this up. I went through one of the lowest phases of my personal life. Some days I didn't code. Some days I couldn't even get out of bed. There were nights I cried. There were mornings I woke up only because I had no choice.

On April 1st, I almost told myself — ‘pause this for two months, you're not okay.' My academics were ruined. My other preparations were collapsing. My head was somewhere I don't wish on anyone.

But somewhere underneath all of that, this app kept whispering. Quietly. Patiently. Like a true well-wisher would have.

When I was finally ready to publish, I chose Microsoft Store first. And I chose the date carefully — exactly one month after the day I lost my best friend.

I didn't tell most people why. It was a private little tribute. A way of saying: ‘See? I kept going. I'm still here. This is partly for you.'

I didn't know anything about publishing on Microsoft Store. YouTube had no recent or accurate tutorials. None of my friends — even the tech ones — had done this before. I sat with ChatGPT, with VS Code, with half-broken docs, and figured it out alone.

Three attempts. Three hours on the final one. I called a few of my closest friends on Google Meet and did the last attempt live. They watched me click ‘Submit'. It went through.

That moment is one I'll never forget.

Once verification was done, I thought the worst was over. It wasn't.

Google asked for: signed AAB, adaptive logos, phone screenshots, tablet screenshots, TV screenshots, content rating, data safety forms — and a thousand small things I'd never heard of. All without a guide. All alone. All with Canva, ChatGPT and stubbornness.

Then came the next wall: 14 days of closed testing with at least 12 real testers. Then a week of production review by Google's team. One mistake at any step, and you redo the whole step.

I needed 12 friends. I got 20–30. The kind of friends who'd stand next to you at midnight if you asked. I had to convince about 40% of them. The juniors said yes instantly. The closest ones said yes without asking questions.

On April 16th, the closed testing officially completed. The next step — production review — is days away.

I had the money to buy the domain almost a month earlier. I waited.

April 17th was the day I first met this person. The day we started knowing each other. It is, and will always be, sacred to me. So that became the day mylibraryapp.in officially became ours.

Funny thing — Hostinger's OTP didn't reach my phone. The payment went through but the domain took up to 24 hours to actually register. I sat there refreshing, half-laughing, half-praying. Eventually it was mine.

The next day, April 18th, I started building this very landing page you're reading the story on.

On April 18th — one day after the domain finally registered — I built the very landing page you're reading this on. The first version felt clean on my laptop. I went to bed thinking it was done. The next morning, a few friends opened it on their phones. ‘Bro, kuch toot raha hai.' The mobile experience was rough. I sat down that same day and rebuilt the responsive layout from the ground up. Funny how it goes — you can build for months and forget the obvious thing: half the world will see this on a screen smaller than their palm.

Three days later, on April 21st, I submitted My Library App for Google Play production access. Everywhere I read, the timeline was 3 to 7 days. Some founders had waited weeks. So I closed the laptop and tried to sleep.

The next morning, April 22nd, the email was sitting at the top of my inbox: ‘Congratulations! Your app has been granted Google Play production access.' Twelve hours. That was it. I read it three times before I believed it. After two months of verification hell, after every door that didn't open the first time — this one swung open quietly, almost shyly, in the middle of the night.

Production access doesn't mean the world sees it yet. It means the door to the world is finally unlocked.

April 26th was a double moment. The first post on our Instagram page went live. And on the same day, I sat down with a coaching owner who also runs a library, and pitched the entire app to him — feature by feature. He was super, super happy. He said he'd help us promote it inside his network. That's the moment something shifted in my head — the idea finally had an owner saying ‘I want this' to my face, not in a survey.

Across India, I have friends in 20 to 30 cities. I spent the last 2 years building real friendships — the kind where you can call at 11 pm and ask for a favour. That network is now quietly turning into our first ground team. They're going to walk into libraries in person, in cities I might never reach myself. Within 24 hours, the first reel had 450+ views, 30 followers, 25 likes, 8 comments, 5 reposts. 5–6 friends shared it on their WhatsApp status. Around 30 people hit the heart on mine. Tiny numbers to the world. Massive numbers to me.

The next step was simple: build the hype on Instagram, and find a library where we could test it properly. Because launching an app without real-world feedback is like writing a book and never reading it aloud.

Our initial plan was to launch publicly on May 10th — Mother's Day. It felt right emotionally. But we had a few more things to finish, and some key team members were unavailable due to important reasons. More crucially, the app hadn't been tested in a real, physical library yet. Launching without real-world testing felt wrong.

So we pushed it. We reached out to two library owners, and today — May 20th — one of them finally accepted. It took a week to make him comfortable. We even offered him a free website just to earn his trust. Today, he created his account. He made some of his students install the app. And I created the very first student account.

Trust me, it feels truly different. I just can't explain my happiness. Opening the app inside a live library, knowing we now have a real testing ground to fix bugs before the public launch — it's a massive milestone. We call today our 'Semi-Launch'.

Some might look and say, 'Hey, it's just one library on board.' But they don't see the vision. Once we are satisfied here, we will run ads, we will do cold calls, we will send emails, and we will physically visit libraries. This 'just 1' will become 100 libraries in just 3 months. And then more than 1,000 libraries in the next 1.5 years. With an average of 50 students per library, that's 50,000 users. That is a huge number.

That's why I'm emotional today. I believe in the quote: 'Every expert in a field was once a beginner.' For now, I'm a beginner. I am at zero. But this is the start line.

This app is like a child to me. I have skipped meals for it — not because that makes me cool, but because something inside me refuses to let it be average.

It solves a real problem. Real attendance. Real seats. Real time. Real communication. Real study flow. Things every student in every Indian library quietly suffers through.

And I want to thank Sidd and Shubham — close friends of three years — who've stood near this dream even when they didn't have to.

On 11 June 2026, we opened to the world. Officially. I thought that would be the finish line. It wasn't. It was the cover page.

After launch, a question kept sitting in my chest: thousands of students prepare alone in rented rooms, hostels, and corner tables — they never join a formal reading room. Should the app ignore them?

So we shifted. Standalone signups. Students who can use timers, planners, browser, wellness, ebooks, and exams tools without waiting for an owner to approve them.

It sounds like a product decision. For me it was personal. I had lived that loneliness in libraries. I didn't want the app to repeat it digitally.

On 27 July 2024, three UPSC aspirants — Shreya Yadav, Tanya Soni, and Nivin Dalwin — drowned when the basement library of Rau's IAS Study Circle in Delhi's Old Rajinder Nagar flooded during heavy rain. The basement was being used illegally as a reading room. Twenty to thirty students were inside when water rushed in.

On 22 June 2026, a fire in Aliganj, Lucknow, killed at least fifteen people — mostly students and young professionals — in a commercial building that housed a library called Learning Space on the second floor. Investigators found locked exits, no ventilation, and smoke that suffocated people before flames reached them.

I read those reports and remembered walking home from libraries at night. Crime data isn't cinematic — NCRB reports well over a lakh kidnapping and abduction cases nationally each year; students commuting after long study days remain vulnerable on empty streets.

We built Emergency Safety: hold-to-alert, library-wide alerts, guardian SMS, emergency contacts, and a command path for owners and our team. I pray no student ever needs it. But if they do, I want the button to exist.

As a student I wanted ad-free study browsing. I heard about Brave — but on a budget phone with 32 GB storage, a 250 MB browser felt like a luxury I couldn't afford. Every megabyte was exam notes, PDFs, and panic.

So we put a Focus Browser inside the app you already have: tracker blocking, study queue, downloads, Shorts-aware focus mode, bookmarks — no extra install. Study on PYQ sites, lecture pages, and research without a wall of ads eating your attention.

It isn't about competing with Chrome. It's about respecting students whose phones are already full.

You sit down to study. Phone face-down. Deep breath. Then — just check Instagram for 'one minute.' Forty minutes later you're in Reels wondering where your evening went.

Focus Lock came from that war. On Android, during your study timer, it can block apps you choose, nudge you in Study Mode when Shorts open, or send you home with a reminder. Usage checks stay on your device — owners see study hours, not your shame list.

We fought store policies and wrote disclosure screens until every permission was honest. Discipline shouldn't need hiding.

We rebranded our AI layer with names that feel human. MLA Ji is the App Guide — deep-links you to attendance, payments, browser, safety, and hundreds of screens so you don't hunt menus at midnight before an exam.

Mannu (Wellness Buddy) is the quiet corner when pressure spikes. Not a therapist. Not emergency care — Tele-MANAS (14416) and 112 are still the real lines. But a place to breathe before you break.

For owners we added Hisab — an AI coach for payments, occupancy, and outreach. Chats are consent-gated, retention-bounded, and never sold to train random models.

We shipped an ebook hub: classics, Indian literature, Internet Archive integration, multilingual search, EPUB and PDF readers. Then read-aloud with regional accents so you can listen on the bus when your eyes are tired.

Students already pay for coaching, rent, and food. Access to reading shouldn't be another subscription war.

On 31 July we integrated Sign in with Apple and pushed toward the App Store — another gate, another set of forms, another month of patience.

Every platform has its own bureaucracy. Google had nakhre. Microsoft had lonely docs. Apple has rules written for companies with legal teams. I'm still one person — but iPhone students deserve the same library, the same focus tools, the same dignity.

While the story page was frozen in April, the repo wasn't. Feature Discovery hubs that walk new students through every corner. Owner circulation desks for conventional libraries — catalog, holds, fines. Referral wallets. Weekly digests. Developer ops: churn radar, error feeds, security pulse, impersonation guardrails.

Skeleton loaders on slow networks. Google Sheets sync for owners who still love spreadsheets. Customize App so you hide what you don't need. Push routing for emergencies, tickets, and focus sessions.

We crossed app version 1.0.60. Over two hundred Supabase migrations. Flutter on the latest stable toolchain. None of that is marketing fluff — it's proof the 'launch' was a comma, not a full stop.

I'm writing this on 2 September 2026 — five months after I last updated this page, and more than a year after the first real line of code.

We have live libraries testing. Instagram growing quietly. Friends walking into reading rooms in cities I'll never visit. Semi-launch became real operations, not a slide in a deck.

I still believe the quote: every expert in a field was once a beginner. I'm a beginner who shipped too much to pretend otherwise — and still not enough to stop.

If you're a student reading this: the app is for you first. If you're an owner: happy students are the business model. If you're on the team: thank you for staying when the story got long.

The next chapter isn't written yet. That's why I'm still here.