Text and Photos by Ritu Jha—
The MoonBattle Conference 2024, recently hosted by ed-tech startup Moonpreneur, an ed-tech startup, brought in parents, students, and young entrepreneurs, venture capitalists to highlight key aspects of STEM, eLearning, robotics, and the role of entrepreneurial and problem-solving skills. The startup is dedicated to imparting tech entrepreneurship to children between the ages of 7 and 16.
Held at the India community Center on April 21 in Milpitas, California, the day-long MoonBattle Conference 2024 saw children as young as seven years old crewing their expo booth – “Show And Tell” pitching to entrepreneurs and VCs.
Prisha Deveishetty (8), one of Show and Tell winners, was all smiles about her ‘Migthy Sanzy’ project. She told indica, “My project is an automatic hand sanitizer dispenser. When I go to the library or different places, people have to push the tap down to get some sanitizer. And in another place, I saw an automatic hand sanitizer dispenser. I thought I could do something like that so people can stay germ-free. When you put your hand under an automatic hand sanitizer dispenser, it does not dispense that much. But I created this so you can pull the sanitizer dispenser down instead of releasing it and get the desired quantity.”
MoonBattle Global Pitchfest winner Pranav Raghavan showcased his project ‘Solar zoom,’ a solar panel attached to a car that works as a battery. He told indica, “I love winning prizes and meeting great entrepreneurs. They give good advice like how to pitch, build, strategize and go to market.”
Pranav Varun, 11, designed a smart gardening machine, which includes adaptive lighting and watering solutions, won the MoonBattle Global pitchfest. “I feel happy and even though I did not get the first place, I think my idea has left an impact,” he told indica.
Global Pitchfest winners Harshal Seth and Deetyam Soni founded LuminaSync Enterprises, which offers music solutions. “Our product is about Reactive LEDs, which means that based on the frequency of a sound, the led strip glows a different color,” Seth said. Talking to indica Seth and Soni said, “Our goal is to make parties more fun, but another important goal is that our product allows blind people into concerts and other musical events. There is also color therapy, which allows terminally ill patients to be able to feel better in their last days, perhaps even get a bit better.”
Tejas Jorapur, 12, won for his ‘Show Garden’ at the Show and Tell exhibition. He said, “It’s fun to learn about coding, c++ and it’s a very alluring class they offer.” Talking about the project Jorapur said, “The robot helps you filter the plant. I was thinking about Roomba that cleans homes and I thought what if Roomba can fertilize the plants. Both my mom and I thought of the idea.”
Alok Jain, co-founder of Moonpreneur and the MoonBattle told indica that over 100 students participated in the Show and Tell event. In the Quick Quest 150 children took part, and in Pitch Fest 60-70 kids. “We selected three best in different age groups,” Jain said. “We also held the Entrepreneurship and Leadership Development Program (ELDP) pitch fest which was organized in partnership with IITs and IIMs. We had 16 winners there too,” Jain said.
“In the ELDP program, we taught over 2000 kids entrepreneurship in short boot camps that lasted for four or five months, in partnership with IITs and IIMs. We have over 2000 students in India and we have several hundred in South America. We have operations in Kenya and now we are also expanding into Nigeria. But India is definitely a huge impact project.”
Judges Speak About MoonBattle
Vipin Goswami; President, IIT Roorkee Alumni Association, Bay Area chapter, and IIT Roorkee Alumni of North America
“I’m amazed to see kids as young as six or seven years coming up with so many ideas. Their presentation skills, knowledge, and their prototypes are excellent. Not only are their ideas astounding, but they also explain those ideas. They memorized many things at the same time, that’s amazing. It was difficult to judge these kids because they were so talented.”
Ken Burke; Founder – Microcasting
“I’ve been judging Moonpreneur events since it began. The essence is to bring young entrepreneurs and give them the required skillsets. Everybody who started small can grow into something like Moonpreneur or bigger. What is so impressive to me is how smart the nine to eleven-year-old children are. How they process information, how they’re eager to listen and take feedback. Interestingly, all of them want to help the world. Whether it’s the environment, or the disabled, they want to step forward. That’s inspirational.”
Amruth Pabba; Serial Entrepreneur and Investor, Chicago
“I started my entrepreneur journey early and made my first exit at 14. Moonpreneur offers these programs for younger students. But back then, these resources were not available. I was eight or nine years old then”
Yash Talreja, a Senior Financial Advisor and Portfolio Advisor at Merill Lynch
“There were many talented kids with so many innovative ideas. We had a very long deliberation in our category. I was one of the judges to give the first prize. And I’m proud to say that during the deliberation, I was able to change the outcome by convincing others that the one they were giving number one was more of an emotional pitch. We ended up changing to someone more practical in the Global Pitch Fest.”
indica also spoke to Surbhi Kaul, who conducted a panel on AI. “It is a great sign that parents are interested. I want parents to be aware that technology is disrupting all professions. I want parents to give their kids a little more room to think about how they will get into a profession because all of those are getting disrupted,” Kaul said.
Day Veerlapati, President and CEO at S2Tech, spoke to children, budding entrepreneurs and the parents at the conference. “The one thing that distinguishes entrepreneurs more than anything is their curiosity. If people are curious, they will identify the problems and they will solve them.”
More than 70 judges and 2000 people, including more than 800 students, participated in the MoonBattle Conference held at India Community Centre in Milpitas, California on April 21.
Moonpreneur founder Alok Jain said, “This was our first event and the response was phenomenal. This success is a big deal because we never thought 2000 people would show up. This is just a start, and we want to see a much bigger impact.”
He added, “The market is going haywire post-pandemic and now work from home is the reality. A lot of people struggle to communicate what they have done or their leadership skills. Now when you are sitting in front of a screen, showing your leadership skills takes a whole different skill set.”
Jain feels that with the AI revolution, a lot of other things will change. “We do not know what job is going to stay, and what job will be eliminated. This makes future generations vulnerable. Their parents are worried. This is what we are trying to address.”
Moonpreneur began its mission to impart relevant education to children in 2020 with 40 kids. Today, the organization has more than 2500 children. “Children aged between 7 to 13 are registered with us and of them, the 7 to 10 age group is about 45% of our audience and 11 to 13 years is another 45%. We are connecting with kids when they are young because at that age they are hooked on various devices and might be very wasting time watching YouTube videos or playing video games. At that time, parents want us to help to channel their consumption energy into creative energy. If a child goes through our education modules for a couple of years, we can give them enough skills so then they can write really strong college applications and build real-life skills,” Jain added.
Jain said Moonpreneur wants to bring Silicon Valley to their doorsteps. “There is a huge need for such an intervention, especially in the developing world. If AI is going to disrupt jobs, we are going to see a very different world. I have been an entrepreneur for over a decade and I struggled a lot in my life because I did not find the right guidance and I want to fix this.”
