Robot training data in India
20 companies with workers here, 13 datasets collected here and 16 sourced events. Reported robot-data pay runs $1 to $4 an hour, 3.1× to 12.5× the local minimum wage.
Open on the interactive map →Work types
robotics datadata collection audio videoannotationrlhf expert
Minimum wage
- $55.30 a month, about $0.32 an hour (ILOSTAT, 2024)
Pay reported
| Work | USD per hour | × min wage | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Human Archive headset workers | $1 | 3.1× | 2026 | techcrunch. |
| Garment worker filmed by head camera, no extra pay | $1.15 | 3.6× | 2026 | theguardian. |
| Salaried egocentric recorder, Bengaluru | $1.64 | 5.1× | 2026 | newslaundry. |
| Data Collector & Annotator (chest iPhone video), Bengaluru | $1.64 | 5.1× | 2026 | greenhouse. |
| Pearl Global factory workers filmed for robot data | $1.31 to $1.97 | 5.1× | 2026 | scroll. |
| Chennai egocentric data workers | $1 to $3 | 6.3× | 2026 | orfonline. |
| Bengaluru vendors filming with Instawork | $2.27 to $3.41 | 8.9× | 2026 | newslaundry. |
| Objectways egocentric video recorders | $2.84 to $3.98 | 10.7× | 2026 | indianexpress. |
| Teacher filming first-person chores | up to $4 | 12.5× | 2026 | cnbc. |
Companies with workers here
Scale AITELUS DigitalAppenSamaMicro1iMeritTaskUsPlaymentTata ElxsiObjectwaysUber AI SolutionsAwignKaryaHumyn LabsQanat Consulting ServicesMetaHuman ArchiveVision LabsDigital Divide DataInstawork
Datasets collected here
- Karya speech and text data time.
com ↗ Major outlet - Project Vaani Target 150,000+ hours across all 773 districts iisc.
ac. Secondaryin ↗ - Ego4D 3,670 hours, 74 locations meta.
com ↗ Secondary - Micro1 at-home egocentric chore recording technologyreview.
com ↗ Major outlet - Objectways egocentric household-task video aawsat.
com ↗ Major outlet - Objectways robot-video annotation 15,000 videos of robots performing folding tasks techspot.
com ↗ Secondary - Awign physical AI egocentric data collection 10K+ hours of video per day (vendor claim) awign.
com ↗ Secondary - Human Archive capture-headset programme aiweekly.
co ↗ Secondary - Vision Labs industrial factory footage backscoop.
com ↗ Secondary - Micro1 egocentric chore video tens of thousands of hours technologyreview.
com ↗ Major outlet - Appen egocentric robotics video ~60,000 hours/month capacity abc.
net. Major outletau ↗ - Humyn Labs physical-AI corpus 10,000 hours, 20+ countries humynlabs.
ai ↗ Secondary - Micro1 chore footage tens of thousands of hours technologyreview.
com ↗ Major outlet
Events
- 2026-09-20 Appen collects 60,000 hours of egocentric video a month
Up to 5,000 contributors worldwide record first-person video for robot training. abc.net. Major outletau ↗ - 2026-07-24 Business Times: egocentric data prices fall to US$2-3 per hour
Southeast Asian and Indian workers film jobs for robot data as raw footage commoditises. businesstimes.com. Secondarysg ↗ - 2026-06-25 CNBC: data-collection contract prices halved
Qanat founder says prices fell by half within months. cnbc.com ↗ Major outlet - 2026-06-24 Guardian: workers in six factories unpaid for footage
Workers wearing Meta glasses or head cameras got no compensation. theguardian.com ↗ Major outlet - 2026-06-23 World Cup AI runs on annotators in Manila, Cairo, Chennai and Ternopil
Sports computer-vision tagging is concentrated in a few low-cost cities. restofworld.org ↗ Major outlet - 2026-06-17 AFP: Indian workers paid 250 rupees an hour for chore video
Tamil Nadu workers film egocentric chore video for Objectways' Fortune 500 clients. khaleejtimes.com ↗ Major outlet - 2026-06-16 Bengaluru vendors' hourly rate cut from Rs 300 to Rs 200
Pay cut within days of recruitment. newslaundry.com ↗ Major outlet - 2026-05-26 Human Archive deploys 1,000+ headsets in India
YC-backed startup raises $8.2M; consent and revenue terms for workers undisclosed. aiweekly.co ↗ Secondary - 2026-05-26 Human Archive raises $8.2M for egocentric data in India
Pays $1/hr base; expanding to Southeast Asia and the US. techcrunch.com ↗ Major outlet - 2026-05-20 Indian Express: Nagpur textile workers told to wear head cameras
Hundreds of workers wore devices all shift; Objectways says India is its biggest source. indianexpress.com ↗ Major outlet - 2026-05-20 Scroll.in investigation into EgoLab factory filming
EgoLab (acquired by Build AI, March 2026) pitches factory egocentric footage at scale. scroll.in ↗ Major outlet - 2026-04-16 Instawork launches Robotics Lab and robot-data certification
Hourly-work marketplace pivots to selling wearable-captured robot data. businessinsider.com ↗ Major outlet - 2026-04-01 MIT Technology Review: gig workers film chores for humanoid training
Contractors mount phones on their heads to record housework for robot training. technologyreview.com ↗ Major outlet - 2025-11-02 Micro1 pays people in Brazil, Argentina, India and US to wear recording glasses
Smart-glasses capture of daily actions for humanoid training. latimes.com ↗ Major outlet - 2025-11-02 LA Times: Objectways sends towel-folding videos to US client
Karur firm with 2,000+ staff, about half labeling robotics and autonomous-car data. latimes.com ↗ Major outlet - 2021-10-14 Meta and university partners release Ego4D
Over 2,200 hours of first-person video from over 700 participants in nine countries, released for embodied perception research. meta.com ↗ Secondary
On-the-ground evidence
- Objectways
We have people in countries like India, USA, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, who are collecting such data for us. Right now, India remains the biggest source
indianexpress.com ↗ Major outlet - Objectways / Encord (Karur, Tamil Nadu)
Encord, a data management platform in San Francisco that contracts with Objectways to collect human demonstration data
latimes.com ↗ Major outlet - Human Archive (YC-backed)
it says it has more than 1,000 active headsets deployed across multiple locations
techcrunch.com ↗ Major outlet - EgoLab (Build AI); counts Tesla as client per Guardian
EgoLab, an Indian data aggregation company extracting this information from Lalita's factory in Gurugram, a city in the state of Haryana, counts Tesla among its biggest clients.
theguardian.com ↗ Major outlet - Humyn AI, FPV Labs, Micro1, Egodata, Neocambrian, XP Robotics, Scale AI, CynLr
a growing ecosystem of firms, including Humyn AI, FPV Labs, Micro1, Egodata, Neocambrian, XP Robotics, Objectways, Scale AI and CynLr, has emerged to build data pipelines for robotics companies.
theguardian.com ↗ Major outlet - Qanat Consulting Services (Objectways subcontractor, Andhra Pradesh)
Qanat Consulting Services in Andhra Pradesh, an Objectways subcontractor, supplies about a dozen larger data firms with recordings.
khaleejtimes.com ↗ Major outlet - Humyn Labs (Bengaluru)
collects 50% of its data from Latin America, 35% from India, and 15% from elsewhere in Asia.
cnbc.com ↗ Major outlet - Awign, Instawork (Bengaluru egocentric collection)
a network of over 1.5 million gig workers [fetch summary]
newslaundry.com ↗ Major outlet - Karya (language data)
some 30,000 rural Indians
time.com ↗ Major outlet - iMerit
Most of iMerit's 5,000 employees in 12 centres across India
imerit.ai ↗ Secondary - Remotasks (Scale AI)
Remotasks remains fully available to existing contractors in Poland, India, Thailand, and Vietnam
restofworld.org ↗ Major outlet - Appen (video contributors)
including India, Canada, the US, Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines
abc.net. Major outletau ↗
Every row links to its source, and hovering a link shows the quote it rests on. Research compiled 2026-10-05. Method