2025: A Year of Breathing, Building & Believing
From health battles to building DareAISearch and Asthma Friend this year changed me in ways I didn’t expect.
As 2025 comes to a close, I’ve been thinking a lot about one word: resilience.
This year didn’t go the way I imagined when it started but in many ways, it gave me exactly what I needed.
January: Broken, but hopeful
The year began with my health at its lowest. I was optimistic because I was about to start immunotherapy for my asthma but it failed. What followed was one of the worst asthma attacks I’ve ever experienced.
Physically exhausted and mentally broken, something unexpected happened.
That phase gave birth to Asthma Friend an idea rooted in lived pain.
A simple mission: help people with asthma breathe easier by giving them community, support, and practical tools.
At the same time, on the professional front, I was deep into experimenting with AI Search. Internal discussions at Digidarts led to the early foundations of what would later become DareAISearch.
January was tough but it quietly planted the seeds for two things that now define my life.
February to April: Momentum returns
By February, my health improved. We announced DareAISearch to the world, and I continued sharing informative content through Asthma Friend.
In March, we began working on SearchScore (V1) our AI visibility checker.
It wasn’t public yet, but select brands started testing it.
March and April were all about building:
Experimenting with brands
Testing hypotheses
Breaking things
Learning fast
This was the phase where DareAISearch truly started finding its shape.
May: Asthma Friend goes public
In May 2025, Asthma Friend officially went public.
We launched our Email + WhatsApp community, and today it’s close to 700 members strong.
Watching strangers support each other, share experiences, and find comfort reminded me why I started this in the first place.
This year, most of my professional energy from Digidarts went into DareAISearch but health continued to be an ongoing battle.
July to September: A breakthrough & Hard Work
In July, I discovered something critical: sleep apnea was silently aggravating my condition.
It was another diagnosis but also another ray of hope.
I started sleep therapy using a CPAP machine, and from July to September, my health significantly improved. For a while, life felt… normal again.
This also allowed me to go full throttle on DareAISearch, we did continuous client acquisitions, product changes and full blown marketing. We started receiving venture interest as well and though of raising funds for this venture.
October to November: Choosing life
Then came Delhi pollution.
From mid-October, my health deteriorated rapidly—steroids, nebulizers (5 times a day), and a long list of medicines.
In early November, I made a hard but necessary decision:
I moved to Dehradun for a 3-month experiment.
As I write this, I’m almost 2 months in and it’s been one of the best decisions I’ve made.
My health is better.
I’m walking more.
I’m living more.
Yes, I caught a cold last week but even that feels manageable compared to Delhi.
I genuinely feel hopeful about building a healthier life here.
Small wins that matter the most
One moment that truly stayed with me:
In September, Asthma Friend helped a community member get a discount on skin prick testing.
It may sound small but it was one of our earliest goals as a community. Seeing it happen felt incredibly rewarding.
DareAISearch: From idea to impact
On the DareAISearch front:
Brands from India, Australia, and the Middle East are using our product and solutions
In July, we officially launched SearchScore and more than 500 brands have used it since.
Watching SearchScore evolve from V1 in March to V5 in November has been surreal
I also personally wrote multiple DareAISearch blogs that were appreciated by industry peers and conducted 3 in-depth webinars.
And this is just the beginning.
Looking ahead to 2026
2026 will revolve around three things:
DareAISearch – bigger product updates, deeper impact, better visibility for brands
Asthma Friend – growing the community and making real-world help more accessible
Health & happiness – because nothing else works without this foundation
I also hope to stay more consistent with this newsletter.
This was my 14th post of 2025 slightly more than one per month.
In 2026, my goal is one post every week.
Gratitude
None of this would have been possible without the people around me.
Through medical challenges and professional chaos, I’ve been incredibly lucky to have:
My parents, wife, and brother
My friends, colleagues, and cousins.
Thank you for standing by me, especially on days when I couldn’t stand by myself.
Wishing you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas and a healthy, hopeful, and fulfilling 2026 🎄✨
Here’s to breathing better, building bravely, and living fully.