ConnectUs Youth Spotlight EP 5 — (Abhijeet and Our Crazy Code: Building a Tech Education Platform from a Part-Time Restaurant Job to 10,000 Students)

Woosung
23 hours ago
7 min read

In Episode 5 of the ConnectUs Youth Spotlight, we spoke with Abhijeet, the founder and CEO of Our Crazy Code, a tech education platform that has trained over 10,000 students across online and offline channels. Abhijeet is currently in 11th grade at a CBSE school in Abu Dhabi, UAE, and has been building his company since he was 12 years old.

For those new to ConnectUs, our podcast puts a spotlight on ambitious high school students who are actively working toward something meaningful. Abhijeet's story is one of the most grounded and practical ones we have heard so far, and it starts, like many good stories do, with a simple question a kid asked his father.

It Started with a Game

When Abhijeet was young, he wanted to build his own video game. His father told him that to do that, he would need to learn coding. Like most kids, he got curious, then moved on.

When COVID hit and his family returned to India for a period, he found himself with time and renewed motivation. He went on YouTube looking for coding courses that could teach him how to build a game, but at that time, before the wave of online learning content that came after the pandemic, there was very little available. So he went offline and found resources that way, eventually learning enough to start building.

Once his friends saw what he was doing, they wanted to learn too. He created a website called Our Crazy Study and recorded himself explaining what he had learned, putting the videos up for his friends to watch. His friends wanted him to teach them directly instead, so he started doing that, one person at a time, explaining how to build apps, write code, and work with the tools he had picked up.

When the pandemic ended and he returned to Abu Dhabi, he decided to turn the whole thing into something real.

Getting It Off the Ground

Building a platform in Abu Dhabi requires official permissions and some financial backing, and Abhijeet had neither at first. To generate the money he needed, he took on a part-time job at a local restaurant, designing their posters, menus, and flyers. That work gave him the initial funds to officially launch Our Crazy Code.

The early model was simple: connect with students, teach them directly, and keep growing. It worked. Students started coming in, and the numbers grew from a handful to 100, then to 200. At that point he needed a team of teachers, so he started conducting interviews.

There was just one problem. The people he was interviewing were graduates with years of experience, and they had no idea they were speaking with a teenager. Abhijeet handled it by presenting himself as an intern who was conducting the interviews on behalf of a company. He would prepare his interview questions carefully, consult with his father and mentors about what to ask, and then run the sessions professionally. Only after the process went well would anyone realize who they had actually been talking to.

Scaling Up and Raising Investment

By the time the platform reached 1,000 students, one-to-one teaching was no longer a viable model. Teaching a thousand students individually would require a thousand teachers, and that was not practical. So Abhijeet pivoted to a recorded course model, but he did not want to lose what had made the platform popular in the first place: the feeling that the experience was personal.

To fund the transition and build out the course library, he needed investment. He emailed and reached out to VCs on LinkedIn, secured meetings, and then got rejected. Over 25 rejections came in, with the consistent feedback being that while the idea and numbers looked good, nobody wanted to put money behind a 12-year-old. Eventually, one VC took the chance. That initial investment allowed the platform to record more than 200 categories of courses. Since then, the company has also raised a seed B round to support its offline expansion.

Logo of 3M Ventures, a VC that funded Adhijeet's project 3M ventures https://www.3m.com/

The platform has now trained more than 10,000 students in a year and a half, and Abhijeet has a team of around 500 people working across online and offline operations.

What Makes the Courses Different

When the platform moved to recorded content, Abhijeet was aware of an obvious risk: it would just become another video library that students could find anywhere. To avoid that, he used AI to make the courses feel personal.

Instead of producing generic content, the platform records courses in a way where the teacher addresses the student by name, references their account, and adjusts examples to feel directed at the individual watching. The company also records each course twice to account for different learning styles, recognizing that students in different parts of the world approach learning differently.

The AI component is something the company invested heavily in. Abhijeet described it as a voice-based AI tutor trained on himself, so students can ask questions and receive responses in his voice, similar to how someone would interact with a voice assistant. Getting there was not cheap. He mentioned that building that single model burned through a significant amount of capital, far more than originally expected, and took about a year and a half to complete. The project started in 2022, before AI tools became as widely available as they are now.

Jaini AI, a built-in AI platform modeled after himself. Out Crazy Code Website — Jaini AI, a built-in AI platform modeled after himself. *Out Crazy Code Website*

Taking It Offline: InnovateX and WeTags

After raising investment, Abhijeet returned to India and visited a village, where he found that people there did not know what computers were or felt that technology was not meant for them. That experience pushed him to expand beyond the internet.

The offline initiative, operating under the name WeTags and powered by Our Crazy Code, works by partnering with existing institutes in a given area. The platform provides branding and curriculum, and the local institute delivers the teaching. Students who cannot afford the courses are admitted for free after a background verification process.

Right now, 10 institutes are running in India, with over 800 students studying at no cost.

Mission of Innovate X, Our Crazy Code Website — Mission of Innovate X, *Our Crazy Code Website*

Bridge App: Built Out of Loneliness

One of Abhijeet's other projects is the Bridge App, and the story behind it is worth understanding on its own.

Entrepreneurship is often talked about as an exciting path, but Abhijeet was honest about what it actually felt like when he was in the middle of it. He said there were many moments where he did not have anyone around him who understood what he was going through. When something failed, he did not know who to tell.

He questioned whether it was all worth it.

The Bridge App came from that experience. It is an anonymous platform designed specifically for entrepreneurs and students who want somewhere to share failures, frustrations, and setbacks without judgment. Each user gets an anonymous ID. There is a private "blackout room" where users can type out whatever they are feeling and release it, and there is also a community feed where people can share their struggles and receive support from others who are going through something similar.

He pointed out that most platforms are built for sharing achievements. Bridge was built for everything else.

Marketing Without a Budget

In three years, Abhijeet says he has spent around $10,000 USD on paid marketing, which for a platform of this scale is almost nothing. His strategy was not to market the product but to market himself.

He started attending conferences and showing people, in person, what he had managed to build and at what age. The story itself was convincing enough that students wanted to come and learn from whoever had done it. Over time, the students who went through the platform became the real marketing channel, recommending it to others in their schools and networks.

He was also candid about why he rarely gives interviews or appears on podcasts. He said he does not feel comfortable talking publicly about what he has built until he has reached the level of success he has set for himself. He agreed to come on ConnectUs specifically because the audience is high school students, and that felt like a worthwhile exception.

Balancing School and a Growing Company

When asked how he manages academics alongside running a company, Abhijeet was refreshingly direct. He does not think it is easy, and he does not believe there is a clean system that makes it all work smoothly.

His approach is to prioritize based on what is most urgent. Most of the time, business comes first because that is what drives him. When exams are approaching, he delegates his responsibilities to a trusted team member, who takes over the operational flow and reports back to him. Once exams are done, he returns to full involvement. He described the process as imperfect but manageable with the right team and the right priorities.

His Advice for Students Who Want to Build Something

Abhijeet was modest about giving advice, noting that he still considers himself in the process of building and does not want to position himself as someone who has already figured it all out. With that in mind, he offered two things he genuinely believes in.

The first is to be excellent at one thing rather than average at many. Whatever you decide to do, work at it until you are genuinely good, because quality and mastery are what separate the people who actually build something from those who stay at the planning stage.

The second is to keep going when things are hard, and to understand that nobody sees the effort that goes into getting somewhere. When students or young founders are recognized for what they have done, people often assume they were naturally gifted or unusually lucky. What those people do not see is the research, the rejections, the late nights, and the failures along the way. In Abhijeet's case, that includes 25 VC rejections, technical setbacks that cost far more than expected, and years of building in an environment where nobody around him was doing the same thing.

Final Thoughts

Abhijeet's story does not follow a neat path. It started with a question about video games, ran through a part-time restaurant job, and eventually reached a platform with 10 offline institutes, 10,000 trained students, and a team of 500 people. At every point where something did not work, he found a way to adjust and keep going.

For students who are thinking about starting something, his example is a useful one: the conditions will rarely be ideal, the people you need to convince will often say no, and the work will be harder than you expect. None of that means you should not start.

We are grateful to Abhijeet for making time for this conversation. He recorded this episode from Abu Dhabi amidst an active war, with warning sirens audible in the background at points during our call. We are greatful for the fact that he showed up, stayed focused and finished the conversation and we believe it says more than any achievement on a resume.

We hope you enjoy Episode 5 of the ConnectUs Youth Spotlight, available on Spotify and across our social media platforms.