Turbo AI: How Two Friends Built a $13M Revenue Startup

Turbo AI, founded by Sarthak Dhawan and Rudy Arora, is a groundbreaking note-taking app that rapidly grew its user base. From their roots as college students to thriving entrepreneurs, they showcased effective marketing and innovation. Their strategic use of social media helped them amass 300,000 users and generate $500,000 in revenue soon after launch. Their journey also taught them invaluable lessons from previous endeavors.

Two childhood friends turned a college note-taking problem into an AI business that generated more than $13 million by age 21

Two friends, now business partners in a company that has generated millions of dollars in revenue, began experimenting with technology and business long before college. Sarthak Dhawan was introduced to coding in third or fourth grade, while he and his childhood friend, Rudy Arora, started their first business together in high school. By the age of 21, they had built an AI startup named Turbo AI, which had generated more than $13 million in lifetime revenue.

Rudy Arora (middle) and Sarthak Dhawan (left)

What is Turbo AI?Turbo AI is an app founded by childhood friends Sarthak Dhawan and Rudy Arora. This app turns study materials into interactive activities and assists with note-taking.

How did Turbo AI grow?Arora was a freshman at Northwestern and his co-founder, Dhawan, was at Duke when they ran into a problem taking notes during lectures. As a result, Turbo AI was born.

Arora states that listening to a professor lecture and taking good notes at the same time was tough. They could not focus on the professor while racing to jot down notes.

Sarthak Dhawan says, "We launched the app in January 2024, and by March 2025, the app was generating almost $500,000 a month. We knew our parents would think it was crazy to drop out since we were both at good schools, but it made sense for us."

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Turbo AI founders didn't have enough money to advertise their product, so they took a social media route. It soon grabbed eyes on TikTok and spiraled into a bigger-than-expected brand. The videos eventually reached 100 million views and grew the account to 50,000 followers - all before the company spent a single dollar on paid marketing. That organic push alone brought in Turbo AI's first 300,000 users and generated more than $500,000 in revenue.

The videos eventually reached 100 million views and grew the account to 50,000 followers - all before the company spent a single dollar on paid marketing.

'Hey, if I give you a cookie, can you download my app?'From ideation to product launch, it took the Turbo AI founders about three or four months.

The app runs on a freemium model. According to Dhawan, their first 1,000 users came from a rather unusual marketing strategy. He took cookies from the dining hall, handed them to students around campus and asked them to download the app in exchange. TikTok helped them scale their business to millions of users. Arora began posting videos three to four times a day on TikTok.

They eventually hired full-time content creators as the business grew.

Bittersweet relationship with AIDhawan says he initially wrote the code for their AI app himself, building it from scratch.

Dhawan reveals that his favourite AI coding tool is nowClaude Code. He says, "The main problem with this is that, over time, as AI writes your code, the code base shifts into this entity that you don't understand. I can feel my coding skills atrophying, and I think every engineer who uses Claude Code knows it's doing that to them. At the same time, we can't avoid using it, because then we're going to be way less productive."

As of June 2026, the company had only 10 full-time employees, and in lifetime revenue, it had crossed $13 million.

The founders have opted to stay lean, avoiding the need to fill expensive roles that typically come with scaling a business. For example, the company doesn't have a chief operating officer (COO).

Don't drop out yetArora cautioned against dropping out of college too early, calling it a "big mistake."

He and his co-founder began working full-time on their app at the end of their sophomore year, a decision they said was not difficult to make.

Although Arora believes he could have dropped out sooner, given how well their business was progressing, he maintains that leaving college prematurely, before a business has gained sufficient traction, can be a costly mistake.

Early experiences and learningsDhawan told Business Insider that he was introduced to coding when he was in third or fourth grade.

While in high school, he built his school district's grade-checking app, which also became popular across Texas.

He recalled how satisfying it was to see people benefiting from something he had built. That experience convinced him he wanted to continue creating products.

In their sophomore year of high school, Dhawan and Arora started their first business together.

After the grade-checking app, they also built a marketplace to help people find Christmas light installers. They learned how to identify what customers really wanted and build products around those needs.

FAQs

* What is Turbo AI and how does it work? Turbo AI is an app designed by childhood friends Sarthak Dhawan and Rudy Arora that transforms study materials into interactive activities and assists with note-taking.

* How did Turbo AI manage to grow its user base so quickly? Turbo AI utilized organic marketing strategies primarily through TikTok, which helped them gain 300,000 users without spending on paid marketing. Their innovative promotion included engaging TikTok videos that garnered 100 million views.