Chong Ing Kai

Kai is the Founder and CEO of Stick 'Em, a social enterprise democratizing high-quality STEAM education for the 95% of schools worldwide that cannot afford specialised tools or trained teachers. A maker since age seven, tinkering with air cannons, tasers, and flamethrowers, Kai's path into education began at 16, when a stint in the STEAM industry exposed core structural inequities.
Founded in 2020, Stick 'Em pairs a low-cost chopstick-robotics kit with ready-made curriculum and teacher training for educators with no prior STEAM background. In three years, its reach has tripled to over 35,000 students across 300+ schools in 18 countries, from rural villages in India to Indonesia and the Philippines. Stick 'Em now works directly with governments across Southeast Asia to drive system-level change in STEAM education, ensuring students who have never touched a robot can build, code, and present their own engineering solutions.
Kai is the global winner of the 2025 Hult Prize, the United Nations-backed competition often considered the "Nobel Prize of students", awarding USD 1 million. Publicly commended by Singapore's Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, he is also a Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia honoree, a Philip Yeo Fellow, and a Tatler Gen.T Leader of Tomorrow. His work has been internationally featured in Forbes, The Straits Times, CNA, and Mothership.