By Steven Gordon, Lemonade Day National President

Lemonade Day works. I have proof of that in the powerful words of Rohit Srinivasan, a 17-year-old senior at Westlake High School and an entrepreneur from Austin, Texas.  Rohit participated in Lemonade Day when he was only eight with the help of his parents and younger brother.  Rohit was a featured speaker at the executive briefing “Business Startup Challenges and Youth Entrepreneurship Opportunities” that was co-hosted by Gallup and Lemonade Day at Gallup World Headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 16, 2018.

Here is what Rohit had to say then and again in an article he wrote recently for a business publication:

“I have 2 jobs – as co-founder of an educational technology startup called Trashbots and as a senior at Westlake High. My dream job is to be an entrepreneur who creates products with broad societal impact.

I received a big head start on this dream because of an initiative by Lemonade Day, which helps kids learn about entrepreneurship hands-on by running a lemonade stand.  My younger brother Sidharth (15), who is also a co-founder at Trashbots, was my co-founder at my lemonade stand 9 years ago.  I made and sold lemonade while he used his 7-year old charm to solicit customers at street corners. We first wrote a rudimentary business plan based on national Lemonade Day framework, and then made a stunning $300 in sales after utilizing a $50 grant from our parents for supplies. Besides the actual experience of operating an ultra-small business, we learned three things: a) Be unique – ours was a distinctive “healthy” lemonade infused with veggies, b) Be opportunistic – we sold it outside a yoga studio and made half our revenues from yoga moms’ bulk purchases, and c) Be socially responsible – we donated half the profits to the Miracle Foundation (a local nonprofit), again the result of Lemonade Day’s emphasis on sharing.

This was an exhilarating experience in which I was firmly bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. I entered business plan competitions and took the incubator class at Westlake. We wrote a business plan for an exercise platform and placed 1^st in the Austin TYE business plan competition, created an education content company and won the 2016 SXSW-EDU business plan competition, and raised money for a local TEDx event. Beyond the success, this was an incredible springboard that paved the path for founding Trashbots.

The insight for Trashbots came from our time teaching robotics in underprovided communities in India and the US for over 5 years. We observed that kids lacked many essential problem-solving and creativity skills. STEM/robotics kits have been viewed as a solution, but have limited impact because they require major infrastructure and are expensive.

To tackle this problem, we co-founded Trashbots along with a Chief Architect from National Instruments, who had tremendous experience driving products’ foray into the education market. The platform we have created together is distinctive. First, it maximizes creativity by allowing kids to use commonly found materials such as popsicle sticks and PVC pipes. Second, it’s one-tenth TCO of alternatives and requires minimal infrastructure—no active electricity or Internet, just a BT-compatible device. Third, it’s scalable—the same platform can serve urban and rural kids K-12.

We realized we were on the right track, given the strong validation. We have taught 1000+ kids across rural Peru (at invitation of Education Ministry) and in Indian orphanages, Mexican colonias, and inner-city USA. We have demonstrated our product to teachers at TCEA, ISTE, and SXSWedu. Solely from word-of-mouth marketing, we have pre-orders for 750 kits from 60 schools in 5 continents.

We have won several competitions for our startup and have been featured in notable publications, including Texas Monthly’s “5 Innovators Reshaping Texas” article in February 2018.