Anantika is building the research guide
she wished she had.
From an overwhelming 72-tab research document to Linkage, a space for students to organize their work without giving up their own thinking.
Anantika came to LaunchLab for business experience. She left with Linkage, an AI research workspace for high school students working without a mentor, and a clearer sense of where people still have to do the thinking.
The 72-tab problem
At one point, Anantika kept her research in a single Google Doc with 72 tabs. Her sources were scattered, and each time she returned to the project, she had to work out where she had stopped. Her first major independent research project took months to set up without a mentor.
Later, when she worked with a professor at a university, she experienced the difference that expert guidance and access to resources could make. She began wondering how other students might have that kind of support.
“If this is what I had back when I was doing my independent research, it would have been so much more impactful.”
Anantika
Starting from a problem she lived
At her International Baccalaureate school, Anantika and her classmates read dense research papers and navigate unfamiliar academic terminology. When she interviewed students during LaunchLab, they described similar barriers, especially in reading literature and organizing their work.
Her idea became Linkage, a guided research workspace where students can keep sources, notes, data, experiments and questions together. The aim was to make independent research less intimidating without doing the thinking for students.
Keeping people in control of AI
LaunchLab's Fall 2026 theme was Entrepreneurship in the Age of AI: The Human Advantage. In a program simulation, Anantika noticed that AI could overlook important context. She also thought about how a tool that wrote an entire paper for a student could remove the learning the research was meant to produce.
“You could ask ChatGPT to write you a research paper. It can do that. But the knowledge you're gaining from it at that point is zero.”
Anantika
For that reason, Linkage was designed to support a student's research process rather than replace their judgment.
A mentor widens the picture
Her mentor, Anoushka, helped her think beyond the science projects she knew best. How would Linkage work for a student studying economics or another social science, where the questions and methods might look different? That challenge pushed Anantika to reconsider how flexible the workspace needed to be.
By Demo Day, her prototype included a guided research map, source library, PDF annotation, experiment and findings tracking, and an AI assistant with boundaries intended to keep the student actively involved.
Thirty minutes before her pitch
During a practice round before Demo Day, Anantika was encouraged to begin with one student's experience instead of opening with an abstract explanation. With less than half an hour before presenting, she rebuilt her introduction around a hypothetical student named Joy, who was curious about microplastics but had nobody to guide her research.
“The pitching was a little bit frightening. But this is super impactful, because now I know I can do it.”
Anantika
Listening to her classmates and taking feedback also helped her understand what a strong founder must do: see the problem from different points of view, communicate clearly, and be willing to revise.
Where she hopes to go next
Anantika plans to continue developing Linkage and is interested in AI, computer science, business and the ethical use of technology in healthcare. The program strengthened her confidence that she can adapt as technology changes.
Her advice to future students reaches beyond pitching or building a company: learn to use emerging tools thoughtfully, keep doing your own thinking, and be willing to grow through the process.