🎨 Startup Spotlight: Benchtop 🎨 Where imagination takes flight
Benchtop is an AI-powered storytelling platform that transforms children’s drawings into animated stories.
The platform acts as a virtual production studio where children take their own drawings and direct them into fully animated, shareable stories. The child remains the creative director, while the AI handles the complex animation and production, making filmmaking accessible to everyone.
💥 The problem: Passive screens & shrinking creativity
One of the biggest challenges in this digital world is that children are primarily passive consumers of content. Simultaneously, creativity and art programs in schools are under pressure, leaving a critical gap where imagination is underused. Parents and educators are searching for meaningful tools that bridge the gap between creative play and modern technology.
✅ The solution: transform passive screen time into active creative time
It empowers kids to be directors and creators of animated stories, using their own art as the foundation. It serves as a simple, effective creative education tool that makes a child’s imagination visible and easily shareable.
⏰ Why now?
🔸The current state of generative AI tools is fast, affordable, and mainstream, making a platform like this feasible for the first time.
🔸A growing number of families are actively seeking alternatives to passive consumption and demand products that provide creativity and agency for their children.
🔸The future of education requires tools that merge art and technology, establishing a new model where digital tools fuel—not replace—creativity.
👤 Meet the founder
Lahari Ganti brings over 10 years of engineering experience, with a focus on Apple platforms and a strong background in prior startups and innovation across the US and Europe. With a Master’s in Materials Engineering from USC, Lahari combines technical expertise with a passion for creative application.
❓ Benchtop tackles the problem of children being passive consumers. What was the moment that made you realize this idea was the one you had to build?
´´There was no specific moment. Generative AI has just gotten better in the last year and has made this possible. This product is a variant of various things I have been playing around with for the last year or so.´´
❓ Given your background in engineering, how was the shift from engineer to startup founder?
´´I actually started an engineering business before – to turn used coffee grounds into filaments for 3D printing in 2019 in the US – never really took off and stalled around R&D phase; software is a bit different and hence a bit more hopeful this time around.´´
📢 Planning to expand the team: Lahari is currently looking for
– People who have worked with kids in creative spaces before AND/OR
– Product designer obsessed with UX+product and likes to sit at the intersection of art and tech
– Dutch is a plus but not mandatory