Like many Indians, Niki Parmar once believed one exam had decided her future. She had done what millions of students do every year: studied relentlessly for IIT-JEE, hoping to earn a seat at the country’s most prestigious engineering institute. She loved mathematics. She loved computer science. But she couldn’t clear IIT JEE. She was left heartbroken.“I thought, ‘That’s it. I missed my chance,'” Niki later recalled in an interview with NDTV.
6 May 2026 | 16:56
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Anyone who has prepared for a competitive exam in India knows that feeling. When years of effort come down to one result, it’s easy to believe there is no Plan B.For Niki, though, life had quietly begun writing a different script. Years later, she would become one of the researchers behind “Attention Is All You Need,” the groundbreaking paper that introduced the Transformer architecture. Today, that technology powers modern AI systems such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and many of the tools millions of people use every day.Not bad for someone who once thought missing IIT had ended everything.
A curious child who liked figuring things out
Niki grew up in a lower-middle-class family in Pune. “There wasn’t anyone to guide me into engineering or AI,” she says. “So, I had to figure it out by myself.”She wasn’t the kind of child who was happy just using a computer. She wanted to know what was happening behind the screen. She taught herself coding, built websites and spent hours experimenting, simply because she enjoyed solving problems. “I was always trying to understand how things worked,” she recalled in an interview with NDTV.
After IIT didn’t happen, she chose not to stop
Niki Parmar
Not getting into IIT hurt her. But after giving herself time to process the disappointment, she enrolled at Pune Institute of Computer Technology instead. It wasn’t the college she had imagined. It was simply the place where she decided to start again. Looking back, that decision changed everything.In 2010, Niki signed up for an online course called ‘Introduction to Artificial Intelligence.’ At the time, AI wasn’t dominating headlines. There were no viral AI chatbots. Few people outside research circles were talking about machine learning.For Niki, it felt like discovering a subject she didn’t know she had been looking for. She couldn’t stop reading about it. Instead of waiting for someone to teach her, she taught herself.“I didn’t have anyone walking me through it,” she told NDTV. “I just learned by doing. I took online courses and worked on side projects.”
Her mother’s unfinished dream became her biggest lesson
Niki Parmar. (Image Courtesy: X/@@nikiparmar09)
There was another reason Niki kept pushing herself. Her mother had once wanted to become an architect but couldn’t pursue that dream because life took a different turn. Rather than letting that disappointment become a burden, she made sure it became an opportunity for her daughter.“My mom always pushed me to chase what I wanted,” said Niki. “She couldn’t follow her own dream, but she ensured I had the freedom to pursue mine.”Sometimes encouragement doesn’t come through grand speeches. Sometimes it comes from a parent quietly making sure their child gets the chances they never had.
The hardest part wasn’t getting into America
After graduation, Niki secured admission for a Master’s degree in the United States. She had arranged an education loan and believed the difficult part was over. Then, shortly after she landed, her father called. The bank wasn’t releasing the loan. In a matter of hours, excitement turned into uncertainty.“I arrived, and my dad called to tell me the bank wasn’t releasing the funds,” she told NDTV. “I had no money, no place to stay, and no idea how I’d pay for my tuition.”Back home, her father and uncle began calling relatives and friends, borrowing money wherever they could so she could continue studying. “It was a huge sacrifice,” said Niki. “My dad wouldn’t have done that for himself, but he ensured I could keep going.” Eventually, things fell into place. Her professor funded her second year, and an internship allowed her to repay the family’s loans before she even graduated.At Google, she was the youngest in the roomAt just 24, Niki joined Google. She was the youngest member of her AI research team. She was also the only one who didn’t have a PhD.“It was a little intimidating at first,” she recalled. “But it was also an incredible learning experience. I was constantly surrounded by people pushing the boundaries of what AI could do.”Instead of worrying about whether she belonged, she kept doing what she had always done: asking questions and exploring ideas that interested her.
The project that changed everything
Niki Parmar with her former teammates.
One of those ideas was something called the Transformer model. It wasn’t officially her assignment. No manager had asked her to spend time on it. She simply found it fascinating.“No one told me to work on it,” she told NDTV. “I just wanted to see how far it could go.”That curiosity led her to become one of the 8 co-authors of “Attention Is All You Need,” the research paper published in 2017 that fundamentally changed artificial intelligence. Today, almost every major language model including ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini owes something to that breakthrough.
Still chasing the next question
Despite helping write one of the most influential papers in AI, Niki doesn’t speak as someone who believes she’s reached the finish line. “There’s always more to learn,” she told NDTV.“I don’t want to be remembered just for the Transformer model. I’m always looking for the next challenge.”Today, she is the co-founder of Essential AI, a startup backed by Google, Nvidia and AMD, where she is working on AI tools for businesses. But if you ask her what drives her, the answer sounds remarkably similar to the little girl who liked taking things apart just to understand them.“We’re still in the early stages,” she said. “There’s so much more to explore, and I want to be part of that future.”
More than an IIT story
It is easy to describe Niki Parmar’s journey as proof that failing one exam doesn’t decide your future. But that feels too simple. What stands out isn’t that she missed IIT. It’s what she did afterwards.She kept learning when nobody was teaching her. She kept asking questions when nobody expected her to. She kept following her curiosity, even when there was no guarantee it would lead anywhere.
