Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru)
Social justice warrior Anoushka Jolly (13) was the youngest contestant to pitch her entrepreneurial idea Kavach (‘shield’ in Hindi), an anti-bullying app with a pre-revenue valuation of Rs.50 lakh, to investors on the popular business reality show Shark Tank India — the India edition of the eponymous American show — and win funding of Rs.5 lakh. The first season of Shark Tank India received 62,000 entries, of whom only 67 succeeded in raising funds.
The sole child of Manu Jolly, an entrepreneur and chartered accountant Monika, Anoushka is a class VIII student of the high-ranked Pathways School, Gurugram. She began her crusade against bullying at age nine (2018).
Experiences of how picking on vulnerable children hurt and demoralised them motivated Anoushka to start the Anti-Bullying Squad (ABS), Gurugram to raise awareness about this issue trivialised in schools and colleges.
In 2019 at age ten, Anoushka was ranked among the Top 3 for pitching ABS to the Young Entrepreneurs Academy, a US franchise that teaches entrepreneurship skills to 11-18 year-olds. Thus far, ABS has positively impacted 100 schools and universities countrywide.
Driven by the belief that whatever is reported can be resolved, Anoushka started ideating Kavach to enable children/parents to report bullying incidents anonymously with a provision for school managements to access them. With the help of technical mentors — Prajakt Deotale, employed at Microsoft, UK and Vaibhav Vats, the Delhi-based co-founder of Digiperform, an education start-up — Anoushka designed a mobile app in August 2021 and launched it in March 2022.
“School director Captain Bajaj supported and helped me spread word about my app. Pathways is where I found the courage to raise my voice against this important issue. I am grateful for that,” she says.
Anoushka has already charted her plans for the future. “I have invested my funding of Rs.5 lakh into the development and marketing of Kavach,” says this go-getting youngster set to go places.
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