Meet the 16-year-old Indian girl whose AI startup is valued at Rs 100 crore

A 16-year-old Indian girl is making her mark in the world of AI with her startup, Delv.AI. According to Business Today, Pranjali Awasthi established Delv.AI in 2022. It is already valued at Rs 100 crore ($12 million) and recently impressed attendees of the Miami Tech Week. At 16, Awasthi has a team of 10 people working under her.

The US-based teenager credits her father for inspiring her entrepreneurial journey and love for technology. Awasthi was just 7 when she started coding. Her family moved from India to Florida when she was 11, which opened up a new world of possibilities for her, giving her access to computer science classes and competitive math programmes.

Landing an internship at the research labs of Florida International University sparked Awasthi’s entrepreneurial journey. She was 13 when she started the internship – a time when ChatGPT-3 beta had just been released. The idea for Delv.AI came to Awasthi during this time, and she started thinking of ways to leverage AI to extract and summarise data from the endless world of online information.

The high schooler was then accepted into an AI startup accelerator programme in Miami, led by Lucy Guo and Dave Fontenot of Backend Capital, marking another milestone in her journey. She tasted “exceptional success” when her Delv.AI was launched on Product Hunt, according to Business Today.