A 12-year-old schoolgirl has created an AI secretary for business and is preparing to conquer the venture market

12-year-old Mana Jumpala from Canada launched her own AI startup, Voxa — a voice assistant for small businesses that answers calls, schedules appointments, and helps companies avoid losing potential revenue. Business Insider reported on this unusual young entrepreneur.

How It All Began

I belong to Generation Alpha and first became interested in artificial intelligence when I was nine years old. Since then, I have learned Scratch and Python, received a special award at a university-level science competition during a trip to India, and was awarded a grant from the 1517 Medici Project, which supports young founders of technology startups.

I have always wanted to create my own technology business. Although I have friends and participate in sports, I mostly work on the startup independently. I found like-minded peers on Discord, where I met other teenagers who are also building their own projects.

The idea for Voxa came after I started spending time at my father’s workplace. I noticed that employees at a small company constantly missed incoming calls because they were busy with current tasks. I realized that even a few missed calls could lead to lost customers, so I decided to create an AI secretary capable of answering them around the clock.

Launching the Startup

Today, Voxa can accept incoming calls, schedule appointments for clients, process restaurant orders, handle missed calls, and automatically generate brief summaries of each conversation. Although the product has existed for less than a year, it has already handled hundreds of calls. Currently, I am working on attracting my first paying customer.

Additionally, I created the Voxa Agents platform, which allows users to create their own AI agents using text prompts without needing to write code.

During the development of Voxa, I actively used generative artificial intelligence. I initially worked with ChatGPT from OpenAI, and later switched to Claude from Anthropic, which proved more convenient for programming.

I never asked AI to write the entire code at once. Instead, I created small components, tested them, fixed errors, and gradually assembled a complete system. To date, the startup already uses its own backend infrastructure instead of third-party solutions.

Challenges

The biggest obstacle for me has been my age. During initial meetings with potential clients, people were more likely to ask how old I am and whether my parents help me than to show interest in the product itself.

Later, I began seeking clients online and leveraging personal connections. There, much more attention is paid to the service’s capabilities rather than the age of its creator. At present, I continue to develop sales and believe that over time, businesses will increasingly use artificial intelligence in their daily operations.

Plans

In the coming years, I want to independently grow Voxa, then participate in one of the world’s leading accelerators — Y Combinator or Andreessen Horowitz — and subsequently secure venture capital investments to scale the company.