At 16, Pranjali Awasthi built a Rs 100-cr AI firm, now she's making ‘ChatGPT with hands'
If you're looking for proof that age is just a number in tech, meet Pranjali Awasthi. She's the Indian-born, US-based coder who started programming at seven, interned at research labs by 13, and launched her own AI startup – Delv.AI --at just 16.The company hit a valuation of around Rs 100 crore (about 12 million dollars) in just over a year.advertisementPranjali's story is as much about passion as it is about opportunity. Born in India, she moved to Florida at 11, where her dad, a computer engineer, encouraged her love for coding.
She dove into computer science and competitive maths at school, and soon found herself interning at Florida International University's Neural Dynamics of Control Lab.There, she worked on machine learning projects from a young age, even helping with research to differentiate ADHD types using EEG data.BUILDING DELV.AI: THE RS 100 CRORE AI STARTUPIn January 2022, Pranjali founded Delv.AI in Miami. The idea was to make research easier for everyone.Delv.AI is an AI-powered platform that helps researchers extract and summarise information from academic content, PDFs, and more.It can search multiple documents at once, connect to your cloud drives, and export results in CSV format. There's even a free plan, with paid options for more features.advertisementDelv.AI quickly grabbed attention, raising around $450,000 (Rs 3.89 crore) from investors like Backend Capital and Village Global. By October 2023, it was valued at about Rs 100 crore.Researchers love it because it can cut down on repetitive R&D tasks by up to 75%, saving them hours of work.WHAT'S NEXT? DASH—HER 'CHATGPT WITH HANDS'Now 18, and a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) student at Georgia Institute of Technology in the US, Pranjali has moved on to her next big thing: Dash. She calls it 'ChatGPT with hands'.Dash is designed to be an AI assistant that doesn't just chat, but can actually take action -- think automation, not just conversation.Last month, Dash hit number one on Product Hunt, and Pranjali celebrated the launch of their official Discord server with a post on LinkedIn.FROM RESEARCH LABS TO THE FUTURE OF AIPranjali's journey didn't start with Delv.AI. She's interned at the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience, and led workshops at hackathons.She's also completed the Creative Destruction Lab's Apprentice Program, diving into AI, agriculture, and more.Her story is proof that you don't need to wait to make an impact. As she puts it, Delv.AI was built to 'go behind the paywall to get you relevant information fast' -- and now, with Dash, she's aiming to make AI even more useful.
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