- Saturday, February 15, 2025
Awasthi, who moved to the US from India at the age of 11, was inspired by her father’s passion and values to get into coding when she was just seven.
By: Shubham Ghosh
AN Indian teen has stormed into the headlines in the world of technology after her startup Delv.AI, which was launched in January last year, succeeded in raising $450,000 (£366,034) in funding till now. The company of Pranjali Awasthi, which works on refining data extraction for research, has a team of 10 employees.
The journey of Awasthi, who is based in Florida, US, and went to Doral Academy Charter High School and worked as a research intern at Florida International University, started young and she gives the credit for her success to her father — an engineer who inspired her.
Awasthi, who moved to Florida from India at the age of 11, told Business Insider that it was her father’s passion and values that encouraged her to get into coding and she was only seven then.
“When I moved to Florida with my family at age 11 from India, my curiosity thrived as I could take computer science classes and do competitive math,” she was quoted as saying by the media outlet.
At 13, Awasthi started her internship at Florida International University where she worked on machine-learning projects while going to high school. As the school had gone virtual during the Covid-19 pandemic, she could work as an intern for 20 hours a week.
It was during her internships that she started thinking about finding exactly what we needed on search engines and she started considering artificial intelligence as the answer.
“That was the seed for my company, Delv.AI,” she told Business Insider.
Two years ago, Pranjali won a place at an AI startup accelerator in Miami, facilitated by tech enthusiasts Lucy Guo and Dave Fontenot, partners at Backend Capital. She joined their 12-week cohort in exchange for a small piece of her future company.
The accelerator became the launchpad and helped Awasthi in luring investments from prominent names including Village Global.
Delv.AI currently boasts an approximate valuation of $12 million (£9.7 million).
