Pranjali Awasthi is an Indian entrepreneur known for raising $450,000 (Rs 3.7 billion) in funding for her artificial intelligence startup called Delv.AI at the age of 16.
Wiki/Biography
Pranjali Awasthi was born in 2007.16 years old; As of 2023) in India. Her family moved to Florida, USA when she was 11 years old. She started learning coding when she was 7 years old. At age 13, she began an internship in a university research lab at Florida International University. While working on machine learning projects, she attended her high school, Doral Academy Charter High School, where she majored in linear algebra and calculus.
physical appearance
Hair Color: black
Eye Color: black
family
parents and siblings
Her father is an engineer.
husband and children
Pranjali is not married.
job
Pranjali Awasthi started a company called Delv.AI during her internship at a university research lab. She was accepted into the HF0 residency in September 2021 and launched her product. Her responsibilities included conducting searches, extracting data, and writing literature reviews. When OpenAI released ChatGPT-3 beta in 2020, she recognized its potential to facilitate and improve research data extraction and summarization. Although Delv.AI was in its infancy, we decided to build a company that would use machine learning to extract data and eliminate data silos. Her time at HF0 ended with her securing her first investment from On Deck and Village Global. The seed funding she received in early 2022 allowed her to recruit her first engineers and begin work on a minimum viable product. The fellowship allowed her to make strong connections within the AI community. Moreover, with her successful Product Hunt launch, these connections proved invaluable in subsequent fundraising efforts. She raised $450,000 from a combination of funds and angel investors such as Lucy Guo and Village Global, valuing it at around $12 million.
social entrepreneurship
Pranjali’s passion for social entrepreneurship began during her childhood in India. While visiting her grandfather, a farmer, she watched him mentor village children to develop their artisanal skills. She recalls the handmade fashion items they made as chic and trendy. Recognizing their global appeal, she planned to sell them without the interference of middlemen, who often took a large cut, leaving the producers with a meager income. This inspired her to set up ‘Indic Valley’, an online portal showcasing these artisan creations. Pranjali’s ambition is to empower artisans by giving them ownership and control over their work on this platform.
Pranjali in conversation with an Indian artisan
Despite the challenges amplified by the pandemic, she successfully attracted external investment. This funding allowed her to assemble an initial group of about 30 artisans at her site, streamline the company’s framework, and keep logistics running smoothly. Indic Valley offers a range of eco-friendly, handcrafted wooden bracelets, shawls, shoes and more from the heart of Indian villages.
Awards and Achievements
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– Published by Masason Foundation (June 2023)
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– Published by IEEE Canada Young Professionals Committee (November 2021)
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– Published by Backend Capital (September 2021)
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– Published by the American Mathematical Association (February 2021)
Favorites
- Indian Snacks: Palais G, Momos
Facts/Quiz
- Pranjali always admired her father, who believed that computer science should be included in the school curriculum along with other basic subjects. Her passion for the subject inspired her to start coding at the young age of seven.
- Her school’s switch to virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic made it possible for her to pursue an internship. She devoted about 20 hours a week to the Schwartz Center for Computational Neuroscience, part of the Neural Computation Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego.
- Through her research internship, Pranjali knew that it was becoming increasingly difficult to identify specific information in search engines. This realization led her to think about how AI could solve these problems. This eventually led to the birth of her company, Delv.AI. Delv.AI’s primary mission is to help researchers easily obtain specific details from a wide range of online content.
- In 2021, Pranjali attended Miami Hack Week and met Lucy Guo and Dave Fontenot, partners at Backend Capital. The duo also founded HF0 Residency, a resident startup accelerator based in San Francisco and Miami.
Pranjali from Hackerfellow
- She secured a spot on the 12-week program in September in exchange for a small stake in the future business. After taking the advice of her parents, who believed in a valuable networking opportunity, she took a break from high school. The residency was responsible for my daily commute to and from my home via Uber.
- A highlight of her residency was launching the beta version on Product Hunt to coincide with Delv.AI’s 15th birthday. Her product became the third most popular product of the day.
- Her Indian heritage meant that studies were a priority for the family. She considered earning a GED, but made it up by completing her high school credits online. She finished school in June 2023. Her parents supported her decision to skip college for a while to continue focusing on her business.
- Pranjali has been a spokesperson at many events such as Rising 2021: Women in AI where she spoke about how to inspire young people to pursue a career in AI. She also spoke about ML in Modern Healthcare at the AI Summit in New York.
Stocking Pranjali as Spokesperson
- She said she might consider going to college later to learn new business skills, such as law or psychology.
- She obtained excellent test scores in competitive exams. She earned a 35 on the ACT in 2022 and a 5 on AP Calculus BC, Computer Science, and Physics in 2021.
- She is called ‘P’ by her colleagues and team members.
- Her hobbies are playing piano and badminton.
- The high school she attended was inspired by Prajali and opened an entire building for AI enthusiasts in blockchain learning and cybersecurity courses.
Pranjali’s tweets about her high school
