My business: From Sharjah classrooms to Silicon Valley, this founder is building AI toys parents can trust

Dubai: Growing up in Sharjah shaped how Akashdeep Deb thinks about learning, building and curiosity. Those early influences now sit at the core of ElatoAI, the startup he founded to bring voice-first artificial intelligence into the physical world.

Deb, 28, is the founder of ElatoAI, a company developing AI companions designed to live beyond screens. Born in India and raised in the UAE, he spent 14 years in Sharjah, studying at Delhi Private School Sharjah from Grade 5 through Grade 12 before leaving in 2020. That period continues to inform how he approaches product design and user trust.

Deb grew up in Al Qasimia and studied in an environment that encouraged active participation. At DPS Sharjah, he served as vice head boy, competed in inter-school quizzes across Academic City and took part in cricket, table tennis and swimming.

“The supportive and diverse school community in Sharjah played a key role in shaping my curiosity, leadership style, and belief in learning through participation and play,” he said.

Competitions such as the Sheikh Hamdan Award and exposure to motivated peers helped normalise experimentation early. That mindset stayed with him well beyond school.

Deb does not come from a business family. His father worked as a director at Petrofac in Sharjah, while his mother managed the household. What he grew up with was encouragement to stay curious and build things.

At nine, he spent summers in Kolkata buying batteries, wires and motors to assemble small electronic projects from cardboard. Many failed. The process mattered more than the result.

By high school, that interest deepened. He took part in robotics competitions in Academic City and Dubai Internet City and spent years learning through online communities such as OpenStudy and Quora. He completed MIT’s Classical Mechanics course in Grade 11 and later studied Andrew Ng’s Machine Learning course, long before AI entered the mainstream.

That curiosity led him to study Computer Engineering and Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

After graduating, Deb moved to San Francisco, working at startups including Coursera and Asana. The experience sharpened his technical skills and shaped his approach to building products.

“What stayed with me was the joy of building something from scratch with a small team and learning directly from users,” he said.

That focus on real-world interaction later became central to ElatoAI.

The concept took shape after OpenAI released early voice AI demonstrations.

“It almost felt like we were living in the Her movie,” Deb said.

He questioned why voice AI remained tied to phones and laptops and why interacting with AI required logins and complex setup. His answer was to build something that could talk naturally, whenever needed.

“I was like wouldn’t it be cool to make a Toy Story style toy that could just talk, whenever, in any voice,” he said.

ElatoAI emerged from that idea. The company builds AI-powered toy companions that tell stories, play games and speak in distinct personalities designed for children.

One of Elato’s earliest validations came from developers. The company’s open-source GitHub repositories have attracted more than 1,800 stars and growing engagement, including from the UAE.

After launching on Hacker News, Elato was featured in the OpenAI Cookbook, joining companies such as Stripe and Supabase. The recognition positioned Elato as a reference point for building real-time voice AI agents on hardware.

The exposure helped drive demand. Elato has delivered more than 100 devices to customers in over 20 countries, serving parents and founders from Europe to South America.

Early growth brought technical challenges. Devices struggled to perform for users far from US servers, leading to choppy audio and reliability issues.

A complete backend redesign followed. The change restored performance globally, serving customers from Australia to South America without downtime.

That experience reinforced a simple principle. Ship early, learn from real users and fix problems fast.

Another challenge involved trust. Parents questioned the role of AI in children’s learning. Elato responded with transparency, open-sourcing its technology and prompts to give customers full visibility into data use.

The next product release will allow AI toys to run locally on a MacBook, keeping data inside the home and functioning without an internet connection.

Deb sees the UAE as a natural market for Elato’s next phase.

“The UAE has played a central role in shaping how I think about building products,” he said.

With improving Arabic voice models, demand is emerging from bilingual and trilingual households where children study in English but want confidence speaking Arabic at home. Elato’s character-based AI supports language learning through conversation and storytelling.

Home learning presents another opportunity, with AI characters guiding children through maths and science topics aligned with local curricula without relying on screens.

Elato raised a small friends and family round in mid-2024, allowing the team to iterate quickly. A Kickstarter campaign is next. The platform has already selected Elato as a “Project We Love”.

Looking ahead, Deb sees Elato helping define a new category of voice-first physical AI companions. Toys, he believes, will listen, adapt and teach, while giving parents control over content, language and data.

There have been no thoughts of returning to a traditional job. Progress fluctuates, but the goal remains steady.

“We are building a device that lets people interact with AI characters through toys in the real world,” Deb said. “I am excited to keep pushing on it and see it through.”