Yash Semlani is not your average 8-year-old boy, unless you know an 8-year-old boy who opened a lemonade stand this year and had sales of more than $5,000, generating a profit of more than $4,500.
“The hardest part is the setting up and winding down of the stand because there are so many things that an 8-year-old cannot do and so I felt dependent on other adults,” Yash says.
Youthful limitations aside, it appears there are very few things that Yash cannot do all by himself. He’s got energy, talent, ambition and the drive to achieve a whole lot of things that many people in their 20s and 30s haven’t even thought about.
“I am creating a network of successful entrepreneurs and successful kids to be mentors and teach underprivileged kids about entrepreneurship,” Yash says. “My parents have been a great sounding board for my many ideas and have taught me to take ideas and think them through more practically than emotionally.”
His father, CK Semlani, could not be more proud of Yash and the things he is doing with his childhood. Semlani says his goal is to just keep it fun.
“We are balancing it out,” Semlani says. “I don’t want him to lose his childhood. I want him to feel like a kid because if he feels like a kid, he’s going to bring that into the work that he does. It needs to be fun. He said to me, ‘Dad, I want to create a “Shark Tank” for kids.’ To him, that’s fun.”
When Yash does someday join the stage with Mark Cuban and Mr. Wonderful on a new version of the hit ABC show, he’ll bring quite a resume of success:
- He won the 2014 EY Youth Entrepreneurship Award and Lemonade Day Entrepreneurial Excellence Award for making a difference in the lives of sick children.
- He set a new national record of $5,056 in sales and $4,535 in profit at a lemonade stand and donated more than $6,000 to Texas Children’s Hospital with a matching donor. He also helped raise an additional $59,000 by launching the hospital’s fundraising campaign.
- He and his younger brother, Jay, 5, are forming a network of marquee entrepreneurs as mentors and a peer network of other kids like him to teach and mentor underprivileged kids.
- He’ll be presenting at a number of business forums this fall, including the Texas Governor’s Small Business Conference in Houston, and he’s being considered for the Youth Leaders Conference at the White House.
“Helping others is in my DNA,” Yash says. “For the past four generations, my family has been involved in giving back to the community in a significant way. My experiences with children’s poverty while I was living in India for a year always made me wonder that kids are in their situation for no choice or fault of their own. Adults have a choice for their situation. So I always wanted the opportunity to teach them about entrepreneurship so they can have the tools to be prepared for life.”
