Equipping children with entrepreneurial thinking and AI literacy prepares them to confidently navigate tomorrow’s rapidly evolving digital world.
“The future belongs to young founders who understand AI and we must help them get ready for it,” says Geet Nagi. As the founder of Kidpreneurs Inc. India, India’s leading youth entrepreneurship platform, Nagi recently launched an AI starter course to accompany their flagship Young Entrepreneurship Programme.
Sharing her thoughts, she says, “What does it take to raise a child who is capable of shaping the future? Artificial intelligence is no longer an event in the distant horizon. It’s here for better or worse, and already embedded in most of the tools children are exposed to and use daily. It’s quietly reshaping all professions as we know them, and redefining what it means to be a capable, creative adult in the 21st century. At Kidpreneurs Inc. India, we have built our entire philosophy around this challenge. And with the simultaneous offering of our flagship Young Entrepreneurship Programme and the newly launched AI Starter Course, we aim to bestow on children aged six to seventeen the two most powerful skillsets of our time, by teaching them to think like a founder and to think with AI.”
Ever since she started Kidpreneurs Inc. India, Nagi’s focus has been to treat the youth as capable, serious thinkers by helping them build entrepreneurial skills from an early age. Through periodically conducted workshops, marketplaces where children sell their products, bootcamps where they learn new skills, and the new AI course, they have helped a large number of children by partnering with schools and communities across the country.
“We believe our two core course offerings taken together are more powerful than either would be alone. The Young Entrepreneurship Programme has taught hundreds of children across India the outlook of a creator. Participants learn to identify problems worth solving, develop ideas into structured concepts, understand their audience, and present their thinking with clarity and confidence. They learn to build pitches and articulate their ideas in a way that is structured and persuasive in their own voice. The AI Starter Course is the hands-on application of this knowledge. Children are not lectured at about artificial intelligence. They are taught instead to create with it. Over the course of the programme, young participants develop a website from the ground up, while picking up on the importance of a strong digital presence. They create their own app and experience firsthand how an idea becomes a working piece of technology. They build a merchandise deck, learning how products are conceived, designed, and presented to a customer. They develop branding and logos, working through what it means to give an idea a visual identity and personality. And they learn to teach a robot,” explains Nagi.
The course culminates in a showcase where each child presents their brand identity and the thought process behind it, to an audience. Nagi further explains, “The AI Starter Course is structured to meet children where they are developmentally, with content calibrated for two distinct age categories. For younger children aged 6 to 10, the course begins with fundamentals such as what is a pattern? How does a machine learn from examples? What is the difference between a rule and a decision? These ideas are explored through storytelling, games, and hands-on activities designed to make abstract thinking tangible and enjoyable. The goal at this stage is not mastery but curiosity.”
“For older participants aged 11 to 17, the course moves into the full applied experience described above. They also grapple with questions that are rarely asked in children’s technology education such as who benefits from this technology? Who might be excluded or harmed? Who is accountable when things go wrong? The ethics of using AI is woven into every session.”
This combination of the two courses is an endorsement of the fact that the skills most needed in the coming decades will be both technical and creative, and what will set one apart from others is the ability to move fluidly and confidently between them. As Nagi shares, “A child who understands entrepreneurship but not AI will find themselves building solutions with one hand tied behind their back. A child who understands AI but not entrepreneurship may be technically capable but lack human-centred thinking skills like empathy, problem identification and communication that turn capability into real impact. Kidpreneurs is building young people who have both.”
She adds, “We have always believed that the best thing we can do for a child is expand what they believe is possible for themselves. Entrepreneurship does that by teaching them to see problems and gaps as opportunities. AI literacy does that by giving them tools of extraordinary power. Together, they create something the world needs urgently — young people who are not afraid of the future, because they know they have the skills to shape it. To our surprise, networking among these young founders has also led us towards interesting business ideas and innovations.”
The courses at Kidpreneurs Inc. India have been built with academic partnerships with ISBF, University of London, which ensures an intellectual rigour and lasting impact that stands apart from those of regular extracurricular activities. It is an ideal option for schools seeking to offer their students something which sits at the intersection of entrepreneurship and emerging technology. Nagi organises in-school sessions, standalone workshops, multi-day bootcamps, and online formats, making the programmes accessible to learners across India regardless of geography. For more information, one can contact Kidpreneurs Inc. India at kidpreneursincindia@gmail.com and on Instagram @kidpreneursincindia.
*Noor Anand Chawla pens lifestyle articles for various publications and her blog www.nooranandchawla.com.
