Priya Chastant Brings Silicon Valley Discipline to Lafayette's Tech Scene

Priya Chastant spent eleven years writing backend systems for logistics platforms in the Bay Area before deciding, almost on a whim during a Christmas visit home, that Lafayette needed a software company of its own. Four years later, Ravenwood Data Systems occupies two floors of a renovated warehouse near the University of Louisiana at Lafayette campus and counts several regional energy and agricultural firms among its clients.

"I kept meeting founders in California who were solving problems that didn't exist here, for markets that didn't need them," Chastant said. "Meanwhile back home, I knew family friends running crawfish operations and oilfield service companies still tracking inventory on paper. That gap was the opportunity."

Solving Unglamorous Problems for Real Industries

Ravenwood's first major client was a mid-sized crawfish processing operation in St. Martin Parish struggling to reconcile pond yields with cold-storage inventory across three facilities. Chastant's team built a custom tracking system that cut the client's spoilage losses by an estimated 18 percent in its first full season, a result that spread quickly through word of mouth among Acadiana's food producers.

That early win shaped Ravenwood's niche: rather than chasing venture capital and a flashy consumer app, the company builds unglamorous, durable software for industries that Silicon Valley tends to ignore. Ravenwood now maintains inventory and logistics systems for two oilfield services companies, a rice mill, and a regional trucking firm, each system custom-built rather than sold as a one-size-fits-all product.

"Priya's genius is that she doesn't try to make our business fit her software," said Camille Trahan, operations manager at the rice mill Ravenwood has worked with since 2024. "She makes the software fit us. That's backwards from how most tech vendors operate, and it's why we've stuck with her."

Growing Lafayette's Talent Pipeline

Chastant has also become an advocate for keeping young engineering talent in Acadiana rather than losing them to Houston or Austin. Ravenwood partners with UL Lafayette's computer science department to offer paid internships specifically structured around real client projects rather than busywork, and the company has hired six former interns as full-time engineers since 2023.

"There's a narrative that if you're ambitious in tech, you have to leave Louisiana," Chastant said. "I believed that narrative myself for a decade. I want to prove it wrong for the next generation, at least for the people who'd rather build something meaningful here than chase a bigger paycheck somewhere else."

The company has faced real growing pains. Chastant acknowledges Ravenwood turned down a lucrative acquisition offer from a Houston-based competitor in 2025, a decision she says cost the company some investor confidence but preserved its independence and its Lafayette headquarters. "We got calls after that asking if we'd lost our minds," she said. "I'd make the same call again."

Looking ahead, Chastant is exploring whether Ravenwood's data infrastructure work could extend into flood-monitoring systems for coastal parishes, a project she is developing in early conversations with local levee district officials. "If we can help a crawfish farmer save his season, I think we can help a community see a flood coming a little sooner," she said. "That's the kind of problem worth building for."