Two founders turn note-taking into an AI success

Two 20-year-old drop-outs, Rudy Arora and Sarthak Dhawan, are behind Turbo AI, an AI-powered notetaker that has grown to around 5 million users and reached a multi-million-dollar annual recurring revenue (ARR) in a short timeframe.

Their app addresses a clear pain point, which is that meetings, lectures, and long videos produce information overload. Turbo AI uses generative AI to convert audio, typed notes or uploads into structured summaries, highlight key points and help users organise insights. The founders describe it as a ‘productivity assistant’ more than a general-purpose chat agent.

The business model appears lean, meaning that freemium user acquisition is scaling quickly, then converting power users into paid subscriptions. The insights are that a well-targeted niche tool can win strong uptake even in a crowded productivity-AI market.

Arora and Dhawan say they kept the feature set focused and user experience simple, enabling rapid word-of-mouth growth.

The growth raises interesting implications for enterprise and consumer AI alike. While large language models dominate headlines, tools like Turbo AI show the value of vertical-specific applications addressing tangible workflows (e.g., note-taking, summarisation). It also underscores how younger founders are building AI tools outside the major tech hubs and scaling globally.

At this stage, challenges remain: user retention, differentiation in a field where major players (Microsoft, Google, OpenAI) are adding similar capabilities, and privacy/data governance (especially with audio and meeting content). However, the early results suggest that targeted AI productivity tools can achieve a meaningful scale quickly.

Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!