Entrepreneurship

How India’s youngest founders are getting an early start with AI

Rekha Balakrishnan

September 07, 2026 | 15 Min Read

How India’s youngest founders are getting an early start with AI

September 07, 2026 | 15 Min Read

Teenagers are no longer waiting for degrees, work experience, or large teams to launch businesses. AI is helping them research, code, test, and turn ideas into working products. The harder test is whether they can build businesses that last.

Eleven-year-old Athvik Amith Kumar walked into a room of investors on Bharat Ke Super Founders, a reality show on Amazon Prime Video, and asked them to invest Rs 2 crore in his startup at a valuation of Rs 25 crore.

Athvik pitched ZOZOconnect, a startup that addresses a problem he noticed while attending events with his parents: piles of business cards were exchanged and eventually discarded. “The cards were on floors, at tables, at cafeterias, even in trash bins. I felt bad for Mother Nature,” he said on the show. “Is this 2025 or 1995?” he thought.

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