Hyd edtech start-up Nexteen awarded prestigious Emergent Ventures grant

Hyderabad: A city-based start-up, Nexteen, which is also Telangana's youngest start-up, received the Emergent Ventures grant from the Mercatus Center, an economic body of George Mason University, Virginia.

This is a talent search grant funded by the Thiel Fellowship and other prestigious universities in the US and is awarded to only 10-15 individuals across the world.

Vedanth Nath, the founder of Nexteen, was awarded nearly $10,000. "We are using the grant money to build the quality of our ecosystem. We want to make it better and invest in resources that let students access exponential tech learning," he said.

Vedanth said a tech platform will be built using the grant amount.

Nexteen is one of the top six T-Hub start-ups that was part of their incubation programme.

The start-up provides a global innovation programme for 13-19-year-olds for over six weeks to six months. It helps them work on global challenges using exponential tech. "We're a global ecosystem for problem solvers," explained Vedanth.

Earlier, the team launched 'Toilet Tales' at INK@WASH 3.0. Toilet Tales is a culmination of 28 stories detailing the lives of street hawkers-turned-entrepreneurs who established the LooCafé. The aim of LooCafé is to spread the word about clean public toilets. The 36-page book shares the stories of 28 people from Hyderabad, who had overcome many odds to find success. The book has short profiles of entrepreneurs, men and women, from various age groups and backgrounds, who have set up clean washrooms as part of LooCafé.

A second edition of the same is set to be launched this week.

"A part of our community is also working with SBM and MoHuA to create a National Youth Internship Programme called YuWash," Vedanth said.

Nexteen is also working with the upcoming Y-Hub launched by TSIC and UNICEF.

"We've got students working on diverse projects with exponential techs, like self-cleaning underwear with nanotechnology or ending open defecation by converting feces to charcoal," Vedanth said and added, "We set the bar high and help students raise their ambitions."