16-year-old raises nearly Rs 4 cr funding for AI-startup

Inspiring success stories of young entrepreneurs often go viral on the internet these days. Recently, a 16-year-old girl named Pranjali Awasthi has garnered all attention in the tech industry with her AI startup. The success story of Pranjali at such a young age is inspiring for all aspiring entrepreneurs.

According to a report by India Today, Pranjali’s AI startup, Delv, has successfully secured funding of around Rs 3.7 crore.

Pranjali Awasthi founded her AI startup in January 2022 at the age of 15. According to a Business Today report, her company has now reached Rs 100 crore valuation and it employs 10 people, currently.

At the Miami Tech Week event in April she shared that all her achievements were inspired by her father, who is an engineer by profession. Pranjali said that her father has always encouraged her to study since childhood. Pranjali began coding at the age of seven, having studied computer science in school.

Pranjali’s company Delv uses Artificial Intelligence to enhance data extraction procedures and get rid of data silos.

According to her, the primary objective of Delv is to help academics find specific information quickly among the expanding amount of online content. After relocating to Florida, United States, at age 11, Pranjali got more opportunities to get enrolled in computer science classes and competitive math programs.

Pranjali’s entrepreneurial journey began when she enrolled in an internship program at the Florida International University research lab when she was just thirteen years old. But, in between, because of the COVID pandemic, her high school education had gone virtual and she was able to do the internship for about 20 hours a week. During her internship period, Pranjali also studied machine learning projects. Further, she joined an AI startup accelerator in Miami, run by Lucy Guo and Dave Fontenot of Backend Capital.

According to reports, Delv.AI’s beta debut on Product Hunt was a huge success. Product Hunt is a technology marketplace where anyone may share their software for free. However, the AI startup secured investments from both On Deck and Village Global.

At Delv, Pranjali oversees coding, operations, and customer service. So for now Pranjali has put all her focus on her growing company and has decided to delay her college education for the time being. However, she intends to go back to school in the future to pursue the business skills needed for her company.