India asks whether footage from homes is training robots abroad

India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology held a consultation on November 12 over home services platforms whose workers wear cameras inside customers' homes to capture video for training physical AI models. Secretary S Krishnan chaired the meeting, which brought in platforms including Pronto, Urban Company and Snabbit alongside robotics companies 1

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. It is the government's first visible regulatory step on a practice that has been running quietly for months.

What the ministry asked

MeitY wanted to know whether footage captured in Indian homes is sold or sent to AI developers outside India 3

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. It asked about data-sharing contracts, how long footage is kept, how much is collected, whether clips are tied to worker identities, how consent works, and what workers are paid 3

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. Officials worry the footage could infringe workers' rights, compromise household privacy and put national data security at risk 2

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Pronto is the only platform named for a written submission, according to people familiar with the meeting 3

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The ministry's interest dates back to May 2026, when a memo from Glade Brook Capital, an investor in Pronto, was reported 3

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. Per the memo, Pronto was building a data business on its workforce capturing household footage for robotics labs. It also described the company as piloting training data with physical AI companies 3

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. Robotics companies want this kind of point-of-view video and sensor data so machines can learn to copy human actions, and appetite for it has been building 1

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Pronto's shifting account

Pronto, an Indian home services startup, has its workers wear cameras during chores and uses that footage to train AI models for robots 3

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. The company said the pilot covered less than 0.01% of its users 2

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What happens to the footage is where the company's story has moved. In May it said all footage would be deleted within 48 hours and that it shares nothing with third-party AI labs. By November 8 it said raw footage is deleted immediately after work and that customers can see an anonymised clip for 48 hours. After that, "anonymised footage is used for AI training" 3

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. Pronto has not said who may be training on the anonymised footage, or where. Its privacy policy, which dates to November 2024, allowed indefinite use of data for research and did not mention video recording or AI training at all 3

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After the consultation, Pronto said it "shared its current practices, which are designed to be compliant with applicable regulations" 3

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The founder's second company

In October, Pronto's founder and chief executive, Anjali Sardana, started Provision Labs, a San Francisco company that gathers data for training physical AI systems. Days later it announced the acquisition of Basilisk Industries, a Mumbai firm making hand-tracking and touch-sensing gear for robots. Lachy Groom, who co-founded US-based Physical Intelligence, has invested in both Pronto and Provision Labs 3

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How Pronto's household data collection connects to Provision Labs remains unclear, and Pronto declined to answer questions about it when Inc42 asked on November 8 3

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The rivals stayed out, and the law has not caught up

Urban Company says it has never filmed inside homes and has no plans to start 3

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. Snabbit ran a single trial assessment at a training centre and decided against proceeding. It says a non-disclosure agreement it signed with robotics data startup Human Archive did not create any commercial or operational relationship 3

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. Both companies made the same denials in May. Pronto, by contrast, turned the practice into a paid product.

Executives at the meeting said selling Indian household data abroad "did not put the country in a favourable light", and asked MeitY to regulate the practice 3

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. Robotics startups argued India should develop physical AI capabilities of its own instead of merely supplying data to foreign companies 3

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Apar Gupta of the Internet Freedom Foundation told MediaNama in May that "a monitoring service in the home and the onward sale of footage to third-party AI labs are two distinct purposes", each needing its own consent 3

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. Once footage leaves Pronto or India, he said, it gets harder to establish who is responsible for it 3

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The DPDP Rules that would let the government add further conditions on such transfers take effect in May 2027. Until then, nothing in Indian law specifically stops footage of Indian homes, workers and children from reaching AI developers abroad 3

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