12-Year-Old in British Columbia Launches AI Receptionist Still Seeking First Paying Customer

A 12-year-old in British Columbia created Voxa, an AI receptionist that answers calls, books appointments, records orders, manages missed calls, and produces summaries. Business Insider reported that the product launched in November 2025 and now handles hundreds of calls while its founder seeks the first paying customer.

Mana Jampala also released Voxa Agents, a platform that lets users build AI agents through plain-language prompts.

She initially used OpenAI's ChatGPT to write code snippets before switching to Anthropic's Claude, which she found more useful for iterative testing. The basic system took two weeks to assemble, after which she moved to a custom backend. Jampala first became interested in AI at age 9.

She attended coding camps, learned Python, won a special prize in a collegiate-level science competition in India, and received a 1517 Medici Project grant awarded to students and dropouts building startups. Business Insider reported that she got the idea for Voxa after noticing missed calls at her father's workplace.

She pitched the service in person to local businesses and spoke with the CEO of her city's Chamber of Commerce.

Some prospects questioned her age or asked whether a parent helped, so she shifted toward online outreach and warm introductions through her network. Jampala said she expects businesses to grow more comfortable with AI adoption within a year. Jampala described a plan to bootstrap for one or two years before seeking an accelerator such as Y Combinator.

She noted that work on the startup has been largely solitary, though she has connected with other young coders on Discord.