12-year-old’s AI startup Voxa targets small businesses missing customer calls

Voxa, an AI-powered receptionist built by 12-year-old founder Mana Jampala, is targeting small businesses that lose revenue from missed customer calls. Jampala, based in British Columbia, Canada, launched the product in November 2025 after noticing her father’s small workplace regularly missed calls because staff were too busy to answer.

The 24/7 voice assistant can answer calls, book staff appointments, record restaurant orders, manage missed calls and generate summaries after each call. Jampala said Voxa is already handling hundreds of calls less than a year after launch, and she is currently focused on securing her first paying customer.

She has also launched a companion platform, Voxa Agents, which lets users build their own AI agents using plain-language prompts. Jampala said she has relied on cold-calling, her personal network and warm introductions to reach potential business customers, including a call with the CEO of her local Chamber of Commerce.

Jampala’s path into AI began at age 9, and she has since learned Python, attended coding camps, won a prize at a collegiate-level science competition in India, and received a grant from the 1517 Medici Project, which supports startups built by high school and college students.

Her long-term plan is to bootstrap Voxa for a year or two, apply to an accelerator such as Y Combinator or a16z, and later pursue venture capital funding as the business scales.