The Beginning
I am Diptamoy Barman. Most people call me Dipt or Dipto. I was born on January 15 2008 in a small city in West Bengal India.
From the start I was the kid who always ranked first or second in class. Teachers liked me. I was charming and obedient. That got me attention but it also painted a target on my back. Same moves different outcomes.
We moved around early on then settled back in Coochbehar my birth city. I made real friends there. Life felt steadier. Grades stayed strong. Everything followed the script until lockdown hit.
I was 12 or 13. No phone of my own. Could not even borrow my parents. For a kid deep in a seven year gaming addiction from Subway Surfers to PUBG to Free Fire it felt like punishment. Games gone. In their place came procrastination distraction and the slow breakdown of discipline.
By class 8 my performance had crashed. I started cheating on tests just to survive. The kid who used to own the top ranks now felt like a fraud. That stung. Pride dignity the version of myself I thought I was it all cracked.
By the end of class 9 I failed six subjects. I spent a whole month in October staring at the ceiling deciding if I should even bother studying. I finally did. I grinded hard for a few weeks and scraped fifth rank. It proved I still had the ability. But it also proved something darker.
The Turning Point
One day in class 10 I sat in front of my history textbook. Pages of pointless facts. My mind spiraled. Even if I ace everything get into a good college land a safe job then what. I saw the future they sell everyone. Stable salary small comforts still thinking twice before buying my mom something nice. Meanwhile some rich kid in a Lambo could destroy it all and just pay to make the problem disappear.
In that moment the thought was simple and cold. Either I live the life I actually want or I do not live at all. No drama. No cry for help. Just a clear promise to myself.
The Climb
I stopped pretending the normal path would ever be enough. I had zero money and zero momentum from all my earlier business flops so I did not jump into another one. Instead I decided to build a real skill first.
I picked three things I actually enjoyed. Football gaming and computers. Football was unrealistic from India. Gaming had already shown me it was just an old addiction in new clothes. So I chose computers.
I had no big plan for coding. I just knew I needed discipline again. I picked Python for no real reason and started a 100 day challenge. I coded on my terrible old laptop and mostly on mobile through Replit. The lectures were challenging but fair. The homework felt good. For the first time in years I was not forcing it. I was actually enjoying the grind.
Five months later I had gone deeper than most people do in three. Then I took Harvards CS50AI course. The projects were brutal. I solved every single one myself no AI shortcuts. Some took a full week. That pain felt honest.
From there I fell in love with AI. Not the academic side but the practical automation side. I learned n8n and Make.com built systems and eventually opened my own AI agency Astershine AI.
Now
For the first 14 months I made exactly zero dollars. I still sent cold emails and DMs every single day. Most people would have quit. I did not. Because for the first time the work itself felt like the reward. I had finally found my ikigai.
Along the way I started building products to solve my own problems. Eagle Cross a cold email personalization tool. DisciplineAI my attempt at fixing the consistency issues that once almost broke me. Viral Clipper. A few others. Some were messy. All of them taught me something. The feeling of shipping something useful that people actually liked was addictive.
That is where I stand today. I am still the same kid who once dreamed of doing business without knowing what it really meant. Only now I understand the game better. I have seen the traps inconsistency shiny object syndrome and societys safe but empty script. I have chosen a different path. Build in public compound skills in silence and create things that matter.
The story is not finished. Not even close. But this is the honest history of how a distracted addicted almost broken teenager turned into someone who finally knows exactly what he is here to do.
And the best part. I am just getting started.