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Sixteen-year-old Rudrojas Kunvar developed Evion, an artificial intelligence tool that helps farmers analyze crop health.
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The tool collects aerial crop data from images captured by drones.
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Kunvar created Evion to make this data more accessible to small and medium-sized farms.
Last year, 16-year-old Rudrojas Kunvar was meeting with a venture capitalist when he received an offer that would thrill even the most aloof teenager: accept $300,000 to drop out of high school and run his artificial intelligence startup full-time.
“It’s definitely been a tough few weeks to think about,” Kunwar, who lives in Germantown, Maryland, told Business Insider. “That’s a lot of money.”
Kunvar spent a summer developing Evion, a free AI-powered crop analysis tool that uses images taken by drones with basic cameras that farmers can buy themselves.
The AI model analyzes the images and generates crop health maps, which farmers can integrate into existing platforms or access via dashboards. Green represents healthy and red represents unhealthy.
Evion is an artificial intelligence crop analysis tool.Evian
“Farmers can use it to predict the future of their crops,” Kunwar said. “You can see which areas need more water or fertilizer instead of spraying everywhere.”
Along with construction and defense, drones are reshaping the U.S. agriculture industry. Michigan State University researchers say the number of agricultural drones registered with the Federal Aviation Administration will be about 5,500 in 2025, compared with about 1,000 in 2024.
Kunvar said Evion can help farmers save money because targeted data removes uncertainty about crop health, meaning they will be less likely to waste water or fertilizer.
Kunvar said Evion is positioned as an alternative to companies selling expensive agricultural drone products or services. Instead, farmers can buy cheap drones, take photos and upload the information themselves.
“That means it’s a more affordable program for these small and medium-sized farms,” Kunwar.
Business Insider’s Young Geniuses series focuses on the next generation of founders, innovators and thinkers trying to reshape industries and solve global challenges. Check out more stories in the series, or contact editor Peter Gelling to share your own.
After founding Evion, Kunvar partnered with Jacob Lee, who had experience creating technology tools, to expand its reach. Kunvar launched an initial pilot in the fall.
Ultimately, Kunvar turned down a $300,000 exit offer, saying he wanted to make sure his product remained easy to use and didn’t get bogged down in chasing profits.
It all starts with a question
The idea behind Evion came to Kunvar when he was attending a community festival as a sophomore at Poolesville High School in Montgomery County. One-third of Montgomery County is designated as agricultural preserves, or protected local lands designed to preserve rural space.
“I asked one farmer how they could tell when disease was coming, or what a slight discoloration meant,” Kunwar said. “He said he was basically guessing. I talked to several other farmers and I realized that all of their answers had one thing in common.”
Kunwar said he was surprised by his lifelong love of technology.
“We’re making a lot of AI advancements across verticals and across industries,” he said. “Why hasn’t agriculture changed much?”
Initially, Kunvar wanted to build his own fleet of fully autonomous drones that could capture data, but after talking to mentors and crunching the data, he took a different direction. Instead, he looked at drones and pinpointed the driver of their cost: multispectral cameras.
“The camera was the major cost. I wondered, ‘What if there was a way to get similar data without using a camera? What if I could use a simple camera?'” Kunvar said.
He points to Tesla and its self-driving cars as proof it works. Unlike Waymo and other companies that use lidar, Tesla relies on cameras.
After building the logistics and AI models, the founders sourced customers by sending cold emails and LinkedIn messages. However, they’ve found better luck partnering with agriculture-oriented nonprofits and organizations to reach farmers.
Now, the technology is helping farmers in North America, Southeast Asia and India.
As for future plans, Kunvar hopes to continue growing Evion while exploring opportunities in different areas, including artificial intelligence infrastructure.
“There’s a lot of ambiguity in entrepreneurship, especially in startups, but I’ve learned that there’s beauty in ambiguity,” Kunwar said. “Sometimes, nothing gets done and then you get the smallest victory and it’s like, ‘Wow, maybe I can do this.'”
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