Six-figure eco king who is in the EIGHTH GRADE: 13-year-old earns $240,000 a year from sustainability company

Kaeden Patel is like any teenager - he loves video games, sports and eating too much candy.

But unlike most boys his age, the 13-year-old makes a six-figure salary after starting up his own company.

The entrepreneur - and his 11-year-old business partner- launched a eco education company that teaches children about how they can help save the planet.

Kaeden now has to be home-schooled because he spreads his time between Canada, London and New York, attending conferences and meeting clients.

But he still makes time for daily meetings with his business partner Vasco Connor, 11, who is from Singapore.

The two have never actually met, and instead conduct their business meetings via avatars using virtual reality headsets. 

Their company, the Sustainable Squad, aims is to advance sustainability education among children, with 12 cartoon characters aiming to educate children about green issues, offering children VR lessons in sustainability. They also make their money through sales of branded merchandise.

‘Earning this much money is amazing at my age - it just drives me on to want more,' Patel told DailyMail.com.

‘I do love sweets - but I don’t think I’ll spend all my money on them.'

‘Me and Vasco meet in a social hangout space in VR,’ Patel said. ‘We play some games, and there’s some educational stuff, like quizzes. We meet in a private space to discuss our business.’

Flanked by his proud father, Nimesh Patel, Patel said, ‘ I've always been quite confident. 

'I'm not a very shy person. And I just, I have had experience, I thought I would give it a shot. I have time. Like, what can go wrong?’

Patel previously did a project where he raised funds for starving children in Africa, doing fundraisers with his three sisters.

‘Me and my sisters rotated roles every year,’ he said, ‘I think I was maybe five years old. One time, I became the CEO, and I loved it, so I thought I wanted more of this, so we decided to launch the Sustainability Squad.’

Patel spreads his life out in Canada, London and New York, taking his favorite cricket bat with him. 

He met Vasco through the home-schooling platform Kabuni and quickly realized that he needed help building his small empire.

He said: ‘I realized Vasco was an amazing writer, so I thought, “I need him on this,” so I asked him, and he said yes. 

'We have done pretty much everything together: we have launched our own YouTube channel and created a website.’

Patel said that he works on an iPad, VR headset and laptop, and dad Nimesh helped him create a shop using Shopify, and he and Vasco designed and launched the website together.

‘We have our first T-shirts on sale,’ he said, ‘We have our first sale, and we’re going to hand-deliver it to the first person.’

The company features AI-generated characters to help teach other kids about being sustainable, which the company sells on merchandise. 

Patel said he came up with the concept for the 11 characters because he loves cricket, so he thought, ‘Why not animals that play cricket?’

‘We found a sustainable place to produce the merchandise, and hopefully soon we are going to produce a book.’

Patel’s earnings come from crypto coins he earned through the education platform Kabuni, founded by his father, which lets children earn Kabuni crypto coins for learning (Patel’s business counts as ‘learning’) - and the value has shot up in recent months.

Kabuni is a web3 education platform that aims to teach children the tech skills needed for the business world of the future, with a focus on home-schooling and VR.

There are a dozen children worldwide with six-figure sums in USDT (the cryptocurrency Tether, which is pegged to the value of the dollar) who have earned them through Kabuni.

Patel said that the home-schooling approach has made him ‘push himself more academically.’

‘It’s much better than school because I get to play cricket three times a week during school hours - and I’m way ahead of my age in maths and stuff.’

‘At school, you wouldn't you wouldn't just be allowed to sit and create your own business during maths, would you? Home-schooling gave me time and supported me to create it and, like, gave me the platform to do it.’

He said that he hopes to launch more business and attend university, but said, ‘Hopefully, I'll be a professional cricketer before that.’

He said that his advice to other young people thinking of launching a business is simply, ‘Don’t be afraid to fail: you have time.’