— Mallikarjun K, Founder · ClearSteps

Mallikarjun K
Founder, ClearSteps · Hyderabad, India 🇮🇳
0+
Years Building Products for Fortune 500 and startups alike!
Not because I wasn't curious.
Because I was too curious
for the system I was in.
I grew up with a modest beginning —
the kind of family where
values mattered more than status,
where loyalty meant everything,
and where you figured things out
yourself because that's just
what you did.
I went to HPS Begumpet.
A school full of confidence
I hadn't found yet.
I sat in classrooms afraid
to ask questions.
Not because I didn't have them.
Because I had too many —
and none of them were
on the syllabus.
So I did what the system
rewards — I memorised.
Bare minimum. Survive. Move on.
Plus 12. Engineering.
Same story.
More memorisation.
Less understanding.
More ceremony than learning.
I just made sure
I scored the bare minimum
to keep moving forward.
Then came GRE.
For the first time in my life
an exam asked me to think —
not remember.
I failed the first attempt.
Not because I wasn't smart.
Because I was still running
the wrong operating system.
I switched to logic.
I stopped memorising answers
and started understanding
why the answers were what they were.
I improved.
And for the first time —
I felt what learning
was actually supposed to feel like.
But the real turning point
wasn't an exam.
It was 2007.
YouTube had just arrived.
The internet was exploding.
And suddenly —
a curious kid from Hyderabad
had access to the entire world.
I watched everything.
History. Culture. Philosophy.
Business. Human behaviour.
Social patterns of countries
I had never visited.
Minds I would never have met.
I didn't have a teacher.
I had curiosity.
And I never stopped.
No one taught me
how to learn this way.
I just followed what
made me feel alive —
the moment when something
you observe in the world
suddenly connects to something
you read three months ago.
That feeling.
That's real learning.
Today —
I process new information
faster than most people
half my age.
Not because I was
the smartest in the room.
Because I never stopped
being the most curious.
That's what the system
never taught me —
and what I never
forgot to be.
Here's what I've come to believe about how we actually learn —
We don't learn linearly.
We never have.
We make an assumption.
We try something.
We see what actually happens.
We adjust.
That gap between
what we expected
and what actually happened —
that's where learning lives.
Schools teach one example
of one rule
and call it understanding.
But real understanding
comes from experimenting
with a rule until it breaks —
and then sitting with
the question of why it broke.
The deeper you understand
that a rule set exists —
even without memorising it —
the more powerful you become.
Think about it this way —
A person who knows
string theory and
its connected principles —
and a person who doesn't
know that rule set exists —
will approach the exact
same problem from completely
different levels of depth.
The first person knows what questions to ask.
The second doesn't even know the question is missing.
AI makes this gap
wider every single day.
Because AI gives you
exactly as deep an answer
as the depth of your question.
A shallow question gets a shallow answer.
A question built on
deep rule-set understanding —
gets an answer that
changes how you see the world.
This is why rote learning is not just ineffective anymore.
It's dangerous.
A student who memorised
their way through school —
will use AI shallowly.
A student who learned
to experiment, observe,
ask and adjust —
will use AI like a superpower.
I built ClearSteps
for the kid I was at 15.
The one sitting in class afraid to ask why.
The one from a modest family
in a school —
feeling like they
don't quite fit.
The one memorising answers
to questions they
don't understand —
because nobody showed them
a better way.
That kid is everywhere in India.
In every classroom.
In every exam hall.
Surviving a system
designed ages back
for a world that
no longer exists.
But I also built it
for the teachers.
Because the most powerful
thing that can happen
to a child —
is a teacher who truly
sees them.
Not their marks.
Not their rank.
Them.
Today's teachers are buried
under lesson plans,
administrative work,
rigid curriculums
and impossible expectations.
They barely have time to teach — let alone connect.
AI should take that
weight off their plate —
so they can do
what no algorithm ever will.
Build a genuine human connection
with the child
sitting in front of them.
The perfect balance
of intelligent tools
and human presence —
that's where the
magic happens.
ClearSteps is our first product.
It's focused on something
immediate and urgent —
helping students prepare
smarter for their CBSE exams
using AI that has studied
every paper ever set.
But it's just the beginning.
A full suite of products
is coming —
each one built around
the same belief:
Every child deserves
the tool that
YouTube gave me.
The one that says —
you don't have to fit
the system's definition
of smart.
You just have to
keep asking why.
I operate on trust
and loyalty above everything.
I'm still learning every day.
And I'm more dangerous
than ever.