The teenager from the US says her father encouraged her to pursue her entrepreneurial dreams and her passion for technology. Awasthi began learning coding at the age of seven. When she was eleven years old, her family moved from India to Florida, opening up a whole new universe of opportunities for her, including competitive math programmes and computer science studies.
Pranjali Awasthi, 16-year-old is the owner of an AI startup -Delv.AI. Awasthi revealed during a Miami Tech Week event that she started her company in January 2022 and had been successful in raising almost Rs 3.7 crore in funding. The Delv.AI LinkedIn page now lists a team of up to ten individuals.
According to her LinkedIn profile there are about 10 employees with her, valued Rs 100 crore. As per Awasthi, the primary objective of Delv.AI is to assist academics in quickly finding particular information amidst the constantly growing pool of online resources. The accelerator program played a major role in helping Awasthi get funding from On Deck and Village Global. At present, Delv.AI is valued at approximately $12 million (nearly Rs 100 crore), having secured funding of $450,000 (almost Rs 3.7 crore).
Awasthi oversees a small but mighty team at Delv.AI, handling everything from operations and customer support to coding.
She credits her father for her entrepreneurial endeavours. Pranjali's father, an engineer, encouraged computer science education in the classroom, which sparked her early interest in technology. At the age of seven, she was motivated to start programming, which set the foundation for her extraordinary career.
She relocated from India to Florida. After two years of studying computer science and mathematics, she started working as an intern at the machine learning lab at Florida Internal University. Her responsibilities as an intern included conducting searches, extracting data, and creating literature evaluations. The kid was given a huge opportunity in 2020 when OpenAI launched the ChatGPT-3 beta version. "I knew we could use it to make extracting and summarizing research data easier," she said.
Her journey took an important turn when she joined the AI startup accelerator in Miami run by Backend Capital's Dave Fontenot and Lucy Guo. Awasthi's acceptance into the programme demonstrated her steadfast commitment to pursuing her goals, even if it meant briefly putting her high school coursework on hold. She talked about how well Delv.AI's beta launch on Product Hunt went.
Awasthi has chosen to postpone her college goals in favour of her responsibilities and unwavering dedication to her organisation, even though her Indian parents still believe that education is an essential attribute.
In order to acquire business expertise that will her her in entrepreneurial endeavours, she intends to go back to school in the future.
