Internet Lifestyle Hub stages NEXTival 2026 - a teen-led festival in Chennai where parents become the audience

As a growing share of Indian parents look outside the formal classroom for life-skills education, Internet Lifestyle Hub (ILH) - one of India's largest communities of digital coaches and knowledge entrepreneurs - staged the first-ever NEXTival 2026 at Feathers Hotel over the weekend.

Over 240 parents and teens gathered for a format that flipped the conventional template: the teens were on the stage delivering the keynotes, and the parents were in the audience.

Hosted by ILH founder Siddharth Rajsekar and his wife Vanita Rajsekar - who together architect NEXT, the community's youth wing - NEXTival surfaced the kind of inter-generational dialogue formal schooling rarely makes room for. NEXT has been running weekly Sunday calls with teens for over two years, training participants in life skills, financial intelligence, emotional intelligence and entrepreneurship. NEXTival is its first major in-person flagship.

"As children, we were forced to follow a particular system - study well, get good grades, get a good job, settle down. After seeing this community build, I started questioning why the same old pattern should apply to the children of this age," Vanita Rajsekar said in her opening address.

Six teens, six keynotes

Hosted by Atreisha Kaur and Rishabh Rajsekar, the event was defined by 6 powerful keynotes:

• Krishaa Shekar -'Redefining Adulthood', on how 99% of Gen Z and Gen Alpha kids carry negative associations with adulthood because they mirror what their parents project

• Nirvan Adriel, homeschooled since Class 3 and targeting Olympic badminton gold at the 2032 Brisbane Games - 'The Era of Purpose'

• Jashann Yarlagadda - 'How To Get Rich Before 25', built around hard data on Gen Z's growing footprint in Indian capital markets

• Shreyas Buddha-'Bridging Worlds', on navigating life with a chronic medical condition through meditation and inner-work practices

• Lisha Lunawat -'The Rebel Thinker', reframing teens as independent thinkers and arguing for empathy-led parent-teen relationships

• Vedashree Vinod - 'The Future Family', on consciously evolving household dynamics as the world changes

"You as parents weren't able to voice out as children. But your teens are vulnerable to you. That doesn't mean you have to carry the same pain into the next generation," Krisha Shekhar told the audience.

'The generation you're raising is already running the economy'

The day's most data-led keynote came from Jashann Yarlagadda, who is in IIT-track schooling and already actively investing in equity markets. Citing publicly available NSE figures, he noted that 40% of National Stock Exchange investors are under 30 and 28% are under 25, argued that Gen Z is already driving 43% of India's GDP - approximately Rs 8.6 lakh crore - and projected that share could grow to Rs 2 lakh crore in his cohort's hands by 2035.

"To all the parents sitting in this room, the generation you are raising is not the future of India's economy. It is already running a large part of it," Jashann told the audience.

A debate format designed to dissolve the parent-teen wall

NEXTival's most distinctive pedagogical experiment was a structured debate format in which teams argued one side of a polarising household topic - and were then, mid-debate and without prior warning, forced to switch positions and argue the opposite case. Topics included 'Is academic pressure from parents justified?' and 'Is respect automatically deserved by parents, or should it be earned?' The latter deliberately pitted a team of teens against a team of parents, with both sides flipped for the rebuttal round.

"Today was not about winning. It was about understanding. Maybe if parents became teens for a day, and teens became parents for a day, arguments would actually become conversations," said Leisha.

The day's experiential anchor was an 'Exponential Visualization' session led by Apurva Yadwadkar, NEXT's lead facilitator. The festival also included a mixed-group goal-setting activity that explicitly forbade listeners from offering advice or career counsel - each participant pitched their goals out loud while the others held space.

"I've always said I wanted to do an event where all of us adults are in the audience, and only the teens are on the stage - and we get to shut up and listen. Today is that moment," Siddharth Rajsekar said from the stage.

Teen Toughness Programme launched

NEXTival 2026 also marked the launch of the Teen Toughness Programme - a 12-week, fully online curriculum for ILH's teen members, led by Chennai-based Master Karthik, covering 12 focus areas across physical, emotional and mental development. It is the first of three progressive tiers in ILH's Teen Samurai pipeline, the others being a residential Bootcamp in July 2026 and a small-group Malaysia immersion with a 9th Dan taekwondo grandmaster.

Three new award categories

• MindSpark Awards - for outstanding teen presentations through the year
• Trailblazer Awards - for teens who achieved significant success outside the NEXT programme
• Keystone Awards - for the most consistent teens and parents

About NEXT and Internet Lifestyle Hub

NEXT is the youth community within Internet Lifestyle Hub (ILH), India's largest community for digital coaches, creators and knowledge entrepreneurs. Founded by Siddharth Rajsekar - bestselling author of 'You Can Coach' and a self-described digital reformer on a mission to reform India's education and employment systems - ILH operates the annual Freedom Business Retreat (FBR), the Nalanda X regional learning network, the Teen Samurai pipeline and now NEXTival. ILH plans to make NEXTival an annual gathering.