Ishan Crawford Ayush Singh was 13 when the Covid-19 pandemic pushed his family into a financial crisis. Six years later, the 19-year-old is reportedly earning Rs 1 crore a month from an AI education business built on the platform Topmate, according to a post that has gone viral on LinkedIn and X. The post was written not by Ayush Singh himself but by Dinesh Singh, the co-founder and CTO of Topmate, the platform that hosts the courses through which the teenager now teaches.
The story has been picked up by how the 19-year-old built the Rs 1 crore AI business, the Hindustan Times, India Today and the Economic Times, each retelling the same account: a self-taught machine learning prodigy from a non-elite background who turned curiosity into a seven-figure monthly business before his twentieth birthday.
A LinkedIn Post That Became the Story
The version of Ayush Singh’s journey that the public has read originated on Dinesh Singh’s LinkedIn profile, under the headline “A 19-year-old is earning 1 crore a month on Topmate.” Dinesh Singh is the co-founder and CTO of Topmate, a platform that lets creators sell one-on-one sessions, digital products and premium cohorts to paying subscribers.
He’s not an IITian, not an MIT grad, and wasn’t born with a silver spoon.
Dinesh Singh, the Topmate co-founder and CTO, opened his LinkedIn post about Ayush Singh with that line, framing the teenager as not an IITian in a field where the credential matters, and positioning his journey as a counterpoint to the standard Indian tech path.
He went on to argue that the same pattern of underpriced expertise is widespread. “Just like Ayush, most creators are sitting on something people would gladly pay to learn, and almost none of them earn a rupee from it,” he wrote. He closed with a direct pitch: “Ayush was sitting on a fortune he couldn’t see. You might be too.”
The post was reshared on X by a user named Anushka Singh, whose tweet that put the Rs 1 crore story online drew more than 8,700 views and 118 likes within hours of posting on June 23.
Topmate profile metrics as of June 23, 2026:
- 4.5/5 average rating across 478 ratings
- 308 testimonials
- Badges include Top Expert, Hustler, Top Products ’24, Main Character ’24
From a Patchy Internet to a Course on MIT’s Radar
The version of the journey reported in the press runs as follows. At 13, during the Covid lockdown, Ayush Singh began teaching himself machine learning using “outdated courses, a patchy internet, a laptop, and a ridiculous amount of curiosity,” as Dinesh Singh’s post put it.
“Within months, he was working with startups abroad,” the post claimed. By 14, it said, “MIT recommended his course publicly.” NDTV, the the full story of the non-IITian AI entrepreneur, and how the self-taught teenager built the AI education venture all carried that MIT claim. None of the three outlets linked to the original MIT post.
Over the following years, Ayush worked on natural language processing systems for a US-based startup, then moved into MLOps and data science roles at open-source framework companies. His Topmate bio describes his current work as data science and his passion as “education and content creators economy.” The specific companies and roles sit in the table that follows.
The Two Companies Behind the Name
Ayush Singh runs two ventures and holds a current data science role, according to his own public profiles.
| Company | Role | Focus | Backing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Antern | Founder | AI-powered EdTech, AR/VR learning | 6-figure monthly recurring revenue per his Topmate bio |
| Second Brain Labs | Co-Founder | AI for customer experience | Backed by Infosys leaders per his Instagram bio |
| Replayed | Lead Data Scientist | Data science role | Current per his Topmate bio |
| ZenML | Former MLOps Engineer | Open-source ML framework | Former per his Topmate bio |
| Artifact | Former NLP engineer | US-based startup, NLP solutions | Former per his Topmate bio |
His speaker profile at the MLDS 2026 conference says Second Brain Labs focuses on using AI for customer experience. He also runs two YouTube channels, “Ayush Singh” and “Antern,” and says he is writing a book called “Core Machine Learning.”
Why the Teaching Wasn’t Paying
Dinesh Singh’s post is less a profile of Ayush Singh than a case study in Topmate’s value proposition.
What was missing was packaging, positioning, and a system to sell it. That is the part Topmate helped build.
Dinesh Singh wrote the line in the LinkedIn post that put Ayush Singh’s story on the public map, casting the platform as the missing piece in the teenager’s monetisation.
The framing puts Topmate at the centre of the story’s turning point: Ayush Singh had the technical skill and the audience, but the business mechanics were missing until the platform supplied them. Dinesh Singh uses that arc to argue that the same gap exists for most creators. “I see this so often in the creator economy that it’s a pattern I can’t ignore,” he wrote.
The post does not disclose the financial arrangement between Topmate and its creators, so it is not clear what share of the Rs 1 crore monthly figure stays with Ayush Singh and what flows to the platform.
The figure itself is described in every outlet as “reportedly” or “around,” and traces back to a single LinkedIn post by a platform executive with a commercial interest in the creator economy pitch.
Reactions Online
The post drew a mix of admiration and self-doubt on X and LinkedIn. “My 28-year-old self is feeling jealous and depressed seeing so many kids achieve so much at such a young age,” one user wrote. “My 18-year-old self is in depression,” another added. A third called it simply “inspiring”; a fourth wrote “Unreal.”
The age comparison was the dominant theme: readers contrasting their own progress at older ages with a teenager’s reported monthly figure.
What the Story Doesn’t Settle
The Rs 1 crore monthly figure rests on a single source: Dinesh Singh’s LinkedIn post, which the press has treated as a first-person account rather than an independently audited disclosure. No outlet has published a verification of the number, and Ayush Singh has not, in any page fetched this session, publicly confirmed or denied the figure.
The MIT recommendation, similarly, is reported by Dinesh Singh and repeated by three Indian news outlets, none of which linked to the original MIT post. The claim that Ayush Singh was “working with startups abroad” within months of self-teaching is also unsourced beyond the original post.
The story is a platform executive’s narrative about a creator on his platform, amplified by the press and by social media.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Ayush Singh?
Ayush Singh is a 19-year-old self-taught AI entrepreneur from India. He is the founder of Antern, an AI-powered EdTech platform, and the co-founder of Second Brain Labs, per his Topmate and Instagram profiles.
How much does Ayush Singh earn from his AI venture?
According to a LinkedIn post by Topmate co-founder and CTO Dinesh Singh, Ayush Singh earns around Rs 1 crore a month from premium AI cohorts hosted on the Topmate platform. The figure has not been independently verified.
What is Topmate and how does it fit in?
Topmate is a platform that lets creators sell one-on-one sessions, digital products and premium cohorts. Dinesh Singh, the company’s co-founder and CTO, wrote the LinkedIn post that brought Ayush Singh’s story to public attention.
Did MIT really recommend Ayush Singh’s course?
Dinesh Singh’s LinkedIn post claims that MIT “recommended his course publicly” when Ayush was 14. NDTV, the Hindustan Times and India Today repeated the claim, but none linked to the original MIT post, and no page fetched this session independently confirms it.
Runlayer Trial With Rippling Ends in Clone Lawsuit 
Finfluencer Tips Hold Steady as SEBI Registration Barely Moves 
KPIT Tech Q1 Beat Masks Outsourcing Tail from OEM Pain 
Air India Easy Connect Opens Amritsar to 27 Global Cities 
Gold Stalls Near $4050 as Iran Oil Shock Lifts Fed Hike Bets 
Brezza Facelift Drops Turbo Below Old Base and Locks Five Stars