Students in high school often feel overwhelmed by schoolwork, extracurricular activities and sports — especially those who strive to excel in all three. Although sophomores Nick Lang and Darsh Mahapatra faced identical pressures to their peers, they overcame these challenges by striving to use their time more efficiently while building important skills for the future. Their plan? Launch a company.

On June 30, 2025, Lang and Mahapatra founded the auto detailing business, Sud Studs Detailing. Building and sustaining a company can be stressful, difficult and even disappointing. In order to build a successful business, hard work is necessary. This makes it tough to have the motivation and commitment to run a business. However, for Mahapatra, the decision was made easy by passion and trust.

“I’ve always been interested in business, [and] I feel like I’ve always been an entrepreneur. [For example], since a young age, I’ve been interested in stocks, and being a business owner has always fascinated me. [So], when I had the extra time and an accountable partner, I knew I wanted to do something that aligned with my interests and [helped] me make money,” Mahapatra said.

For Lang, the reasons were different, but the appeal of starting a business led him to join Mahapatra.

“I was looking for something to occupy my time that would also help me in the long run. [The idea] started with a motivation from both of us to make some money to [help] pay for things that we wanted, [and I knew] Darsh would be a reliable and hard-working [partner]. So when we were thinking of the idea [to start a business], I was all in,” Lang said.

Once the commitment was made to start a business, Lang and Mahapatra faced the challenge of building a foundation and an idea that would work for it.

“I had been seeing a lot of videos on social media [about] how car detailing was a profitable, manageable first business [for high schoolers]. [However], the time on our hands and knowing that [Mahapatra] wanted to do it as much as I did definitely encouraged me; it was probably what pushed us [the most],” Lang said.

Lang and Mahapatra’s shared vision for a business became the basis for their company, Sud Studs Detailing. Once the idea was set, the next step was collecting all the supplies and items they would need.

“It took a lot at the beginning to [acquire] all the supplies and other [stuff] we needed. We had to use [our own] money to [buy] everything. [It] took [around] $500, [but] we did take a few items from our houses as well,” Mahapatra said.

With all the tools ready to use, Lang and Mahapatra worked hard to build their name on multiple social media platforms and create easy forms of communication with customers. This willingness to be flexible and work with customers helped their budding company to succeed.

“We are [online] on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, and we [post] videos on all three as well. Our posts are normally before-and-after videos along with regular pictures. Those are [also] the platforms that we use to communicate with our customers, [but] we use iMessage and Snapchat, too, because [some] people prefer those,” Mahapatra said.

While Lang and Mahapatra have worked on over 20 cars and $2,000 in profit to date from a variety of customers, they began in a much different fashion. 

“It started with mainly friends and family, but as we did more cars and became more active on social media, we got other customers as well. Right now, we get a majority of our customers through our social media pages, where we’re pretty active all around. [Occasionally,] we still get customers through people we know because the word spreads and people start to trust us more,” Lang said.

With over three months having passed, and multiple experiences and customers gained, Lang and Mahapatra look back at the success of Sud Studs Detailing so far.

“[Our business] so far has been going good; we’ve doubled what we’ve put into the company, and we’ve been getting customers and clients who will book with us again in the future, which is really good. [Also,] we’ve been getting a lot of views and likes on social media, which is really motivating. [However,] we can still get more clients and fill up our schedules even more,” Mahapatra said.

Looking ahead, Lang and Mahapatra look to expand Sud Studs Detailing. They have high expectations for themselves and hope they can meet those in the future.

“Our future goals are to expand our social media presence and have a large group of loyal customers [who] recommend us consistently to their friends and family so we can get clients through referrals. [We hope] that [it will] eventually lead us to not needing to focus on finding customers, but [instead] perfecting our services, getting better equipment, and [making] the process easier and more efficient for everyone,” Lang said.