Deepti Aggarwal smiles at the camera.

Deepti Aggarwal Calculates a Future in Finance

By Kirsten Heuring Email Kirsten Heuring

Heidi Opdyke

Carnegie Mellon University's Deepti Aggarwal had a plan to increase avocado production in the United States: sell the idea to tobacco farmers.

"We wanted to help tobacco farming as an industry," Aggarwal said.

Aggarwal and a high school classmate created a business to encourage farmers to transition to avocados using drought-resistant seeds that require similar water and temperature conditions as tobacco crops. Their work was recognized by the international Conrad Innovation Challenge and spurred Aggarwal to pursue entrepreneurship. A love of math encouraged her to do it through computational finance.

"I think of financial instruments as mathematical objects," said Aggarwal, a junior in computational finance. The major is a jointly managed by Carnegie Mellon's Mellon College of Science, Tepper School of Business and Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. "It's been really valuable to come to CMU and see people doing quantitative finance or building their own startup or getting into banking and trading."

In her first year, Aggarwal joined the Tartan Student Fund, an investment group sponsored by the Tepper Finance Group, an undergraduate organization. The fund allows students to invest $100,000 in assets from the Tepper School of Business for long-term gains.

Aggarwal collaborates with fellow students to select stocks that they investigate to understand a stock's price and calculate its potential returns. Students share findings with the group, and if 70 percent of the members approve, the group will invest some of the fund into the stock.

"The first pitch I ever did, I was looking at the telecommunications and media sector," Aggarwal said. "The pitch ended up passing, and the stock did pretty well, but what was really exciting to me was getting to hear upperclassmen work through investment theses and do their analysis."

Aggarwal continued to work on her pitching at the 2025 Regional Venture Capital Investing Competition, where she was on a team with her fellow students. Her team's scenario involved investing in one of three startups, and they created a deal and terms of investment based on provided information. The team earned second place.

"I loved working with my teammates to simulate what it would be like to actually strike deals with investors in the venture capital space," Aggarwal said.

Aggarwal joined the Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Association (UEA) in her first year. Sponsored by the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship — which works with Carnegie Mellon students, faculty, staff and alumni to bring ideas to market — the UEA offers students from any department to learn more about entrepreneurship. The group offers resources for networking and entrepreneurship, including events like hackathons and pitch competitions, as well as education programs covering a variety of financial topics.

"I really fell in love with the community," Aggarwal said. "I'm constantly amazed with how productive and efficient the members of UEA are."

Aggarwal became president of the UEA in the spring of 2025. Dave Mawhinney, founding executive director of the Swartz Center, said her leadership is essential to the group's success.

"Deepti is a go-getter," Mawhinney said. "She is a natural born leader who is making the UEA a successful organization of like-minded students who will be future entrepreneurs and business leaders."

Her efforts with the UEA helped her earn a Swartz Innovation Scholarship for her junior and senior years. As part of the program, Aggarwal will receive hands-on experience with startups and receive mentorship from founders, so she will have the tools to launch her own venture in the future. Besides gaining valuable skills, Aggarwal said she is looking forward to being part of a passionate group of students.

"A lot of my friends are interested in the startup scene, and now I caught the bug," Aggarwal said. "I'm really excited about the idea of working for yourself and working on your own startup."

Aggarwal worked as a summer analyst at Morgan Stanley, gaining experience as a trader.

"I'm really lucky I'm doing a trading internship," Aggarwal said. "Even though it's different than some of the other things I've done on campus, it's been a really great opportunity to explore the field."

Aggarwal said her math education from Carnegie Mellon has been at the core of every experience.

"Math is really all about problem solving and building intuition, which is why it's so important to every field," Aggarwal said. "With business and finance, I've found that your ideas are a lot more reliable if they have any sort of data and analysis behind them."