Pranjali Awasthi said her father's passion encouraged her to get into coding when she was 7.
Pranjali Awasthi, a 16-year-old Indian prodigy has made it into the technology world with her venture, Delv.AI, a startup dedicated to refining the process of data extraction for research. Ms Awasthi launched the company in January 2022 and has already raised $450,000 (Rs 3.7 crore) in funding. Ms Awasthi has a team of up to 10 employees.
Her journey with technology started young, and she has credited her father, an engineer as the primary source of inspiration for her entrepreneurial journey. She told Business Insider that her father's passion and values encouraged her to get into coding when she was 7.
She told the media outlet that she moved to Florida with family at age 11 from India and the world of computer science and competitive math opened up for her.
At the age of 13, she started interning in university research labs at Florida Internal University working on machine learning projects alongside going to school. During COVID, she used to intern for about 20 hours a week because her school had gone virtual.
During her internship days, she started thinking about how AI could solve the problem and the idea of Delv.AI came about.
In 2021, Pranjali won a place at an AI startup accelerator in Miami, facilitated by tech enthusiasts Lucy Guo and Dave Fontenot from Backend Capital. She was accepted into their September 12-week cohort in exchange for a small piece of her future company.
She momentarily stepped away from high school. The accelerator became the launchpad and helped her in attracting investments from prominent names including On Deck and Village Global.
She explained that Delv.AI's primary objective is to aid researchers in accessing specific information within the realm of online content. Delv.AI raised $450,000 (approximately Rs 3.7 crore) in funding and currently boasts an approximate valuation of $12 million (Rs 100 crore).