A 13-year-old student from China has turned a common problem faced by students into an AI-powered study assistant and earned around Rs 2.5 lakh from it in just three days.
Zhu Shuhan, a junior secondary school student from Shanghai, came up with the app without knowing how to write a single line of code. Zai Chang, her invention, is designed to help parents monitor their children’s study habits from a distance with a sense of connection and help students to stay focused.
The young developer won the third prize at a national AI product marketing competition in Hangzhou. She made 18,000 yuan, or almost Rs. 2.5 lakh, from sales of her product.
How The 13-year-old came up with the AI App
The idea behind the app was inspired by Zhu’s own studies. Her parents were busy and could not always sit with her while she was studying, the report said.
She admitted to getting distracted when she was doing her homework and using her phone to do so. She also found that many of her fellow students were also having problems with this issue (in terms of self-discipline while studying).
This got her thinking about the idea of making a “digital parent clone.” Rather than a parent sitting on the floor with their children during the study time, the app could monitor activity and alert them when it was time to be done and tell them when it was time to do something.
The app was named Zai Chang, which is literally ‘On Site’ in English. Its idea is based on AI to create a virtual supervision system for kids during a study session.
Users just upload a picture of themselves, and the system takes over as a virtual parent. It can also tell a parent if a child is using a mobile phone or has left their seat when they are studying and alert them.
The app is also useful for studying.
Zhu’s idea was not limited to monitoring students. She also identified other problems students frequently face while preparing for exams.
Things like arranging study schedules, understanding and summarising complicated notes, and creating practice quizzes were among the ones to do. So the app was built around supervision and study support.
The teenager also wanted the product not to become an overly strict monitoring tool. She did not want the app to rely on constant warnings and wanted it to be more gentle and allow children to learn the process.
And that approach influenced some of the features she built while making the product. Zhu introduced a function that simulated a mother getting angry but later removed it in favor of a more supportive approach, Zhu said.
Her younger brother was also among the first users to try the app.
No coding experience did not stop her.
Zhu was a bit of a novice in programming as she had no programming experience.
Even though she didn’t know how to code, she was able to create the AI product and use the AI-based tools that she could. This is another sign that more AI development tools are reducing the technical barriers to software development for people without programming backgrounds.
Zhu said that the experience made her realise that having a good idea might be enough to bring a concept to life with the help of AI.
But coding skills are still useful. The AI tools allow people with little technical knowledge to experiment with ideas and build working products.
App earns 18,000 Yuan in Three Days
Zhu’s app was entered in a national AI product marketing competition in Hangzhou from August 21 to 23.
The competition had 50 participants and the winners were not chosen by a traditional judging panel. Rather than judging them on sales of their products, rankings were based on how much money they made from their products.
Zhu received 18,000 yuan from 90 orders in three days, according to the South China Morning Post report cited by NDTV. That performance earned her third place in the competition.
The result turned a school problem into a real business experiment. Rather than simply putting up an AI project for a competition, Zhu tested whether people would actually pay for the solution.
And her experience also underscores one of the emerging uses of AI with younger users. AI tools are increasingly being used to answer questions or generate content, but also to turn ideas into products.
For Zhu, this project started with a problem she had when she was studying. In a matter of days, it had grown into an online product that attracted paying users and got her to be one of the winners of a national AI competition.
