Companies such as HumynAI Labs, Egodata, Neo Cambrian, XP Robotics, and Objectways have deployed people on the ground starting early this year. They are collecting data on everything from household chores like washing dishes and folding laundry to the manufacturing sector.
A massive demand for data to train robots has resulted in an influx of companies entering the arena. On-demand domestic services provider Pronto reportedly deployed workers to record video with consent for 0.1% of its customers. This has caused a controversy with a section of the industry and customers alleging breach of privacy.
These companies are either working directly with robotics research labs or third-party players such Encord that have partnered with large AI firms.
A quick search on job-hunting platforms such as Indeed and Naukri reveals that there are hundreds of jobs open for data annotation across companies in India, including for physical data collection.
Vineet Saraogi, cofounder of physical AI data collection company XP Robotics, called this the “new age back office for AI” where the data collected from here would be used for training AI models.
He likened this to the British-era cotton industry, where the British used cheap cotton sourced from Indian farmers and sold high-value garments made from this raw material in the Indian market. “We are seeing a similar trend playing out in AI as well,” he said.
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Back office again
India has historically been a supplier of raw materials, said A Damodaran, adjunct faculty and former professor at Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore. “The division of labour had always pushed us to low-value-added contributions and the place where things got processed.”
In the internet era, Kedar Vishnu, associate professor of Economics at Manipal Academy of Higher Education, said Indian companies were largely offering back-office operations for global firms, before moving up the value chain.
A similar pattern is playing out in the AI era, now with Indian companies getting into data processing, collection and annotation.
“This is a transition that has happened. But if you ask, are we getting any benefits from the work we were doing? No. We are working for the companies and not becoming like them,” Vishnu said. While there is innovation, he said given the scale of India, it is still small. Unlike countries like the US, the gap between industry and academia is huge, he added.
India, even now, is largely a consumer economy that lacks serial innovation, said Damodaran. “We were a controlled economy for long since the 1950s. In the last 25 years, we have shifted to high-octane consumerism. There is little appetite for long-drawn R&D projects in high tech, even when funds are available,” he said.
Multiple founders ET spoke with said India lacked research muscle necessary to build frontier technologies and is going back to the services mindset.
China is leading in the robotics space, largely funded by the government, while the US has a strong research foundation and capital, said a founder, adding: “But India has neither. That is the core of the problem.”
India ranked 38 in the 2025 Global Innovation Index, trailing the US, Europe and several Asian countries.
Also Read: ETtech Explainer: What Pronto’s new video recording feature means for your privacy
Beyond services
Vishnu said services-driven growth would not be enough and India must focus on how AI can be used in sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing.
Damodaran pointed out that for India, opportunity also lies in shifting quickly to human-in-the-loop systems amid the rapid adoption of the technology. “But guardrails need to be strong,” he added.
HumynAI Lab founder Manish Agarwal, in an earlier interaction, told ET that they are not just looking to collect data, but actually adding value through processing and moving up the value chain.