Hello, this is Priyanka Salve, writing to you from Singapore.
Welcome to the latest edition of the “Inside India“ — your destination for news and developments from the world’s fastest growing economies.
India is seen as a laggard in the global AI race, but having the world’s second largest workforce and low labor costs has led to an increase in companies gathering data to train robots. I have spoken to the workers and companies in India that are fueling this trend of people inadvertently training robots.
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It’s a big story
When it comes to making AI robots, China and the US are miles ahead of India. New Delhi is seen as a laggard in the global AI race and, by extension, in the virtual AI space.
But having the world’s second largest labor force and relatively low labor costs has given India a unique opportunity – it can give people to train robots.
Tanisha Reddy, a teacher at a private school in southern India, lights the lights as a robotics trainer. He starts the day by filming first-person videos of people doing mundane tasks like cooking, cleaning dishes, and packing lunches, he told CNBC over the phone. In the evening, he repeats the process, producing 3-4 hours of video every day. You earn less than $4 per hour of recording.
“I’m very happy,” said Reddy while explaining that the job is easy and doesn’t require extra effort, and it doesn’t involve her taking time off to raise her two children.
It has been more than four months since he started working for Qanat Consulting Services, which is a company in Andhra Pradesh.
In less than a year, several firms have sprung up in India recruiting people to record first-person or selfie videos. Many of them record data, check quality parameters, and perform data annotation on behalf of clients in the US and China. These can be robotics companies or, in some cases, other consultants.
This photo taken on May 15, 2026 shows Indian housewife Nagireddy Sriramyachandra wears a smartphone on her head as she records her actions by motion capture while washing dishes at her home in Chennai.
R. satish Babu | Afp | Getty Images
“We get contracts mostly from companies in the US and China,” Thaslim Pattan, founder of Qanat Consulting Services, told CNBC, adding that he recently got a contract to get videos from employees of a clothing manufacturing company.
Robots are developed in the lab, but need to be trained in a real-world environment, he said. As the robotics market is expected to grow rapidly over the years, the need for data collection is increasing.
Global brokerages are booming with the growing demand for robots, and Barclays expects the market for humanoid robots to grow to $200 billion in less than a decade. At the same time, Morgan Stanley predicts that it will exceed $5 trillion by 2050, with the number of robots reaching 1 billion.
But despite the growing volume of work, Pattan said contract prices for data collectors are falling as the number of competitors increases. In a few months, prices have already halved, he added.
Data collection is commoditized, and Indian companies in the space will have to move up the value chain to stay relevant, say experts.
To maintain profit
Neocambrian AI, a startup based in northern India, last month launched a robot data factory in Noida where it collects data for robots in simulated environments, Abhinav Kukreja, the company’s founder, told CNBC.
He also established a network of more than 100 factories where workers filmed themselves on the job.
The company is directing efforts to create datasets that are “useful in solving problems,” and to teach robots “how to manipulate things,” he said, adding that it would take 100 million hours of video to reach a human-like level of expertise.
For example, a robot needs to understand the different levels of pressure required while holding an egg versus holding a bottle of water. Every additional dataset helps the robot improve its ability to manipulate objects like a human hand.
Its main business is data processing, and unlike many of its peers, it retains its ownership. “We don’t go to customers and ask them what they want,” the founder explained, adding that instead he provides customers with pre-built Neocambrian AI datasets.
“Beyond the AI stake, this is the only layer where India is not only participating but winning,” said Kukreja. Human data has been valued since the advent of AI, and India can become a “global labor market,” similar to its experience in the information technology sector.
Experts tell me that like smartphones, robots have a hardware component and an operating system. Although India has a long way to go when it comes to manufacturing robots, they say the country can play a role in developing applications.
Humyn Labs, another Indian startup in the space, is focusing its efforts on data transformation and building a diverse set of data from different sources. It claims to provide “(verified) human intelligence at scale” and collects 50% of its data from Latin America, 35% from India, and 15% from elsewhere in Asia.
It focuses on transforming and owning the dataset, Manish Agarwal, founder of Humyn Labs, told CNBC.
It’s early days for training robots using videos, and eventually, the job market for data collection will be saturated. India needs to “transform from being a collector to a converter” to maintain its profitability, he added.
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It’s coming
June 29: Industrial output data for May.
July 1: HSBC Manufacturing PMI for June.
