She Started Coding at 7. By 16, Pranjali Awasthi Had Built an AI Startup Valued at Nearly ₹100 Crore

Long before Pranjali Awasthi was pitching investors or building an artificial intelligence startup, she was a seven-year-old learning how to code. 

Growing up in India, Pranjali was introduced to programming by her father, an engineer who believed strongly in computer science education. What began as an early exposure to technology gradually became something she kept returning to through coding, mathematics and, eventually, real-world research.

Years later, that foundation would help her build Delv.AI, an AI-powered platform designed to help researchers find and work with information more efficiently. In 2023, when Pranjali was 16, media reports said the startup had raised about 3.7 crore with a valuation of ₹100 crore.

But the more interesting part of her story began much earlier than the funding round.

The startup began long before there was a company

Pranjali's interest in technology deepened after her family moved from India to Florida when she was around 11. There, she gained greater access to computer science classes and competitive mathematics programmes thus giving opportunities that allowed her to take an interest she had developed at home and push it further.

By 13, she was interning at research labs at Florida International University and working around machine-learning projects. The experience brought her closer to a problem researchers know well: there is an enormous amount of information available online, but finding the exact piece of information you need can still take time.

For Pranjali, that gap became an opportunity. Instead of looking at artificial intelligence only as something to study, she began thinking about how it could help researchers search through growing volumes of information, extract what mattered and make sense of it faster.

Turning a research problem into an AI product

That idea eventually became Delv.AI. Founded in 2022, the platform was built around a relatively simple question: could AI reduce the time researchers spend manually searching through large amounts of text and data?

Delv.AI was designed to help users find, organise, extract and summarise relevant information. Rather than building technology for the sake of technology, Pranjali was working on a problem she had encountered herself while spending time around research.

Her path into entrepreneurship also grew through experimentation. She participated in hackathons, including Miami Hack Week, which exposed her to founders, engineers and investors in the local startup ecosystem. She later joined HF0, a residency programme for people building technology companies.

It was a significant step for a teenager. The programme gave her time to concentrate on building Delv.AI, refining the product and putting it in front of people who could test, question and support the idea. A beta version later gained attention on Product Hunt, a platform where new technology products are launched and discovered.

When the idea began attracting investors

As Delv.AI developed, so did investor interest. Reports from 2023 said the company had raised approximately ₹3.7 crore at the time with backing associated with investors including On Deck, Village Global and AngelList Quant Fund.

Those same reports placed the company's valuation at about ₹100 crore. The figure quickly became the headline attached to Pranjali's story: a 16-year-old founder behind a startup valued at nearly ₹100 crore.

Yet a valuation is only one part of what makes the journey notable. Before investors arrived, there were years of learning, an internship, hackathons, a problem worth solving and repeated attempts to turn an idea into something people could actually use.

Being young also came with its own challenges

Building a company while most people your age are still in school brings an unusual set of decisions. Pranjali temporarily stepped away from a conventional high-school path to pursue the accelerator opportunity and focus on Delv.AI. She has also spoken in interviews about the realities of being a young founder — from building a team to learning how to lead while the technology around her changes quickly.

Not every moment went smoothly. In one interview, she recalled a demo in which her web application crashed in front of founders and investors because of a small coding mistake. The presentation was embarrassing in the moment, but it still led to investor interest which is a reminder that entrepreneurship rarely follows the perfectly polished path that success stories can suggest.

What started at seven

It is easy to look at Pranjali's journey and focus on the biggest number attached to it: ₹100 crore. But another number may say more about how the story began — seven.

The startup did not appear overnight when she became a teenager. It was preceded by years of learning how to code, exploring mathematics, taking part in research, joining hackathons and being placed in environments where she could use those skills on real problems.

Her journey is an unusual one, and not every child who learns to code will need to become a startup founder. What it does show is what early exposure can make possible when learning moves beyond theory. A skill learnt young can become a tool for asking better questions, experimenting with solutions and building something that did not exist before.

For Pranjali Awasthi, that journey began with code on a screen. Years later, it became a company attracting attention far beyond the classroom.