Anoushka Jolly is the 15-year-old founder of Kavach who embarked on her journey as a response to distressing childhood experiences with bullying.

Her mission began at just nine years old when she founded the Anti-Bullying Squad (www.antibullyingsquad.com), an impact enterprise that worked on creating awareness against bullying amongst children; she's since impacted over 2 million people in 20,000 schools.

After collaborating with a few NGOs and doing some more groundwork on bullying, she observed that the main reason bullying is such a big issue is that it isn't reported. Based on this ideology and the current education infrastructure, she created an app called Kavach, which is a bullying reporting mechanism.

At the age of 13, Anoushka became the youngest entrepreneur to receive funding for Shark Tank India. In 2023, she won the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar (the highest civilian honour for a child) from the Honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi and President of India, Smt. Droupadi Murmu, in the field of social service. As a social entrepreneur and changemaker, she strongly believes in the power of technology for the betterment of mental health, as evident in her work.

Key themes emerging out of our conversation:

• Defining Bullying.

• How one can empower oneself.

• Significant role of grandparents.

• Inspiration drawn from Shark Tank.

• Inspiration behind the anti-bullying journey.

• The dynamic with parents as business partners.

• Standing up for oneself without disrespecting others.

• How can the family empower rather than solve problems.

• The role of the school counsellor is to help build empathy and forgiveness.

• Balancing entrepreneurial pursuit, academic commitment, and personal life.

• Expressing emotions in a safe space has the therapeutic effect of releasing pent-up anger.

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