We all remember our sweet-16 which was mostly around fancy birthday parties, colorful clothes and new toys. A cherry on the cake was receiving money from the relatives for buying our share of chocolates. Amidst the bubble of our own world, we hardly identify our passion in a young age. But do you know there is a girl who followed her passion for coding and is earning crores by finding an AI company?
Yes, what you read is true. Pranjali Awasthi from India left her high-school and founded Delve.AI – her own AI Company which is turning 100 crores today. Read more to know some interesting facts about her which might motivate you further to do something big in life!
Journey and Early Life of Pranjali Awasthi
Founder of Delve.AI Company, Pranjali Awasthi is a daughter of an engineer dad who believes that computer science is a subject that should be taught alongside other core subjects in school. Since her childhood, her dad always believed in the tech world for having greater potential. He was very passionate for computer science and always kept talking about its advantages to her which led her interest to coding at the age of 7 years.
When she turned 11, her family had to move to Florida for her Dad’s profession. There Pranjali’s curiosity thrived as she started taking computer science classes for doing competitive math. Then came the horror period of the Covid-19 lockdown due to the pandemic which led to virtual schooling. Not all kids were leaving their laptops and online classes alone, as Pranjali utilized this lockdown period for doing something big.
The idea to launch Delv.AI Company
Virtual schooling was not that interesting for her so Pranjali decided to do something extra with her time. Soon, she started working as a research intern in university research labs at Florida Internal University working on machine learning projects alongside her high school. The pandemic gave her an upper hand as she was able to intern for 20 hours per week.
Her tasks included searches, extracting data, and creating literature reviews. 2020 was a bright year for the tech world as OpenAI released its ChatGPT-3 Beta to make extracting and summarizing easier. Being a research intern, she realized that it was super hard to locate what you exactly need from the ocean of available information online. That was the seed for Pranjali for starting her own AI company – Delve.AI.
The accelerating spot for her AI Company
Delve wasn’t a fully formed idea at the beginning, but she wanted to start a company using her machine learning skills to help sort the process of locating the needed information online within a specific period of time. In 2021, she attended Miami Hack Week in Florida where she met the partners of Backend Capital who also founded a live-in startup accelerator in San Francisco and Miami.
She was selected for their 12 week cohort program in exchange for a small piece for her future company. Her parents believed that the opportunity was worth to go for as even the networking from the program would be very useful for her company. While working with them she took a few years to work more on her AI company and launched it at the age of 15 years. Few years of her concentration and continuous hardwork transformed her AI company and today, Delve.AI helps researchers to find exactly the information they are looking for.
Challenges of this young founder
Being a founder of a successful running AI company at the age of 16 years is an achievement in itself but it is challenging as well because the world thinks you are still a kid. Let’s know more to understand the challenges faced by Pranjali in finding her AI company.
1. People look at me like a kid
In most of the workshops and entrepreneur events in Florida, people used to look at her like a kid and were more inclined to figure out what she wants and why she’s here. To overcome this, she always tried to keep a clear objective and initiate conversations rich and stacked with content which helped her remove the ‘child’ tag from her.
2. Funding for her startup idea
It was challenging for her to locate potential funding resources as helping people understand the sole idea of her AI company was a bit challenging. Then finally in 2022 she got her first funding which was sufficient to hire first engineer for one of her projects. Since then, her strong connections from the AI community of that fellowship event helped her a lot and today her AI company raised approximately 3.7 crore funds and values at around $12 million.
3. Win the race in the flooded market
Everyday the competition is insane as there is a flood of AI products in the market. In 2021, ,everybody kept talking about crypto but the end of the year 2022, changed everything to AI. With this fast-paced growing market, the next step for Pranjali is to refine her product with user generated feedback and raise more funds for generating new helpful hands in projects.
4. A small team equals more workload
Today Pranjali has a team of 10 employees working for her and being the youngest amongst all she has to keep a clear flow of communication to convey the goal and mission of her AI company in the upcoming years. She supervises the work of all the employees and contribute her part as well. It was quite difficult for her to manage the time alongside being a high-school student so, she decided to drop out of her high-school to focus thoroughly on her AI company for the time being.
The responsibility on my plate for completing my passion is too much but I will never take a backseat because of the challenges.
Pranjali Awasthi
All these challenges for a young girl could have been too much to break her spirit, but she decided to never give up and continue hustling as the youngest brain in the AI market.
Restart College is a ‘maybe someday’ for her!
Academics is always a priority for her Indian parents so, she was forced to complete her high-school credits online in 2023 only. It was difficult for her to manage the AI company and studies together but she had to do it for her parents. After this she decided to not continue college and focus primarily on her company. Understanding her choice was pretty hard for them but they have agreed for the time being.
She know that someday in future when Delve.AI will be smoothly functional and top-ranked in the market, Pranjali would be forced to attend college but for her, College is surely a ‘maybe someday’. She believes that everyday, she is learning more than she would have ever learnt by attending college.
With academics being the preferred option by all the parents in India, isn’t it amusing what Pranjali did?
Mark sheets and rankings at school cannot decide your future is truly justified as a live example by this young founder of a AI Company. We need more such talented minds who thrive to find solutions of some real-life common problems in the technical world.
Feature Image – Twitter, Delve.AI, Canva
If you loved reading the story of AI company founder, Pranjali Awasthi, then do have a look at a similar story of a couple who lost their jobs in Covid and together started a micro-plastic free herbal tea brand, Dolshyne.
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