Meet Mana Jampala: The 12-year-old who learned Python at age 9 and built Voxa, an AI startup helping businesses in multiple countries avoid missed calls and customers

Mana Jampala, a 12-year-old student from Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, is making headlines after building Voxa, an AI-powered receptionist designed to help small businesses answer customer calls around the clock.

The young founder's journey has gone viral as people around the world learn how she turned a problem she spotted at her father's workplace into an AI startup already being used by businesses in multiple countries.

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Who is Mana Jampala?

Mana Jampala is a Grade 7 student from British Columbia, Canada, who began exploring coding at a very young age. Her interest started with Scratch programming camps before she taught herself Python at just nine years old.

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Since then, she has immersed herself in artificial intelligence, earned recognition in science competitions and received support through the 1517 Medici Project grant, which backs young founders building startups.

Despite balancing school, sports and friendships, Mana has devoted much of her free time to developing AI products and learning software engineering.

How did Mana Jampala come up with the idea for Voxa?

The inspiration for Voxa came from a simple observation at her father's workplace. "When I was 11 years old, I would go to my dad's workplace, and I'd notice they'd miss a lot of calls," she told Business Insider.

"They're a very small team, so they'd be super busy. They'd either ignore them or not notice them at all."

She realized that every unanswered phone call could mean a missed customer and lost revenue. Instead of treating it as an everyday business problem, Mana decided to build an AI solution.

What is Voxa?

Voxa is an AI-powered virtual receptionist that answers business phone calls 24 hours a day.

The platform can:

• Answer customer calls
• Book appointments
• Record restaurant orders
• Handle missed calls
• Generate summaries after every conversation
• Help businesses automate customer interactions

According to Mana, the platform is already serving businesses in Canada, India and Cambodia, with a focus on restaurants, pharmacies and other service-based businesses.

How did Mana Jampala build the AI startup?

Mana said she used AI coding tools as assistants while building Voxa. She first relied on OpenAI's ChatGPT before later moving to Anthropic's Claude for coding help. Instead of asking AI to write everything at once, she broke the project into small pieces.

"Instead of making it write the entire code base in one single try, I like to ask it to do little snippets of code, so I can look at it, test it out if something breaks, figure out why, and then fix it," she said.

"Now, I have this massive code base, which I know works because I've tested every small part of it." She added that the first version came together quickly, but development never really stops.

"The basic system took two weeks, but I'm always adding more code, fixing bugs and adding features. It's a never-ending process," she explained.

Today, Mana has moved beyond third-party systems and is building Voxa using her own custom backend.

Building a startup at 12 wasn't easy

Launching a company at such a young age also brought unexpected challenges. When Mana pitched her product to local businesses, many people focused more on her age than on the software.

"The reaction I got was a bunch of, 'Wait, how old are you?' And I also got a bunch of, 'Does a parent help you with this? Is it just by yourself?'" she said.

However, she noticed that businesses she contacted online paid far more attention to what the product could do.

"Their responses were not as age-focused," Jampala said. "Maybe it was the in-person effect, but these people are a bit more product-focused."

Finding a community of young AI founders

Although building a startup can sometimes feel lonely, Mana said she has found encouragement through online communities.

"I really like it, but sometimes it does feel isolating. In my area, I don't really know any other people my age doing this," she said.

She later connected with other teenage founders through Discord. "I've been meeting a lot of awesome people — a bunch of 13-year-olds who know how to code and who are running startups," Jampala said.

"I'd recommend doing that for any other young founders trying to look for a community."

What's next for Mana Jampala and Voxa?

Mana says her immediate goal is to secure more paying customers while continuing to improve the product.

Looking ahead, she hopes to grow the company steadily before eventually joining a startup accelerator and expanding further.

Alongside Voxa, she has also launched Voxa Agents, a platform that allows users to build AI agents using simple text prompts.