Forbes Daily Briefing
Forbes Daily Briefing
Forbes
Why This Startup Is Strapping Cameras To Housekeepers’ Heads In India
6 minutes Posted Aug 3, 2026 at 7:30 am.
0:00
6:56
Download MP3
Show notes
On a Tuesday evening in early July, Anushka Ahuja, a dentist in Gurgaon, India, opens the door for the house help she booked ten minutes ago on Pronto, an app that provides instant professional cleaning services like sweeping, mopping and laundry across 11 cities in India. A woman clad in a crisp uniform greets her with a polite smile, then asks: Can she strap a small camera onto her head to record her work? 
Ahuja isn’t surprised to see the camera. In fact, she paid an extra nine rupees (about nine cents) so her cleaner would record everything from her elbows to her fingertips. Now she’ll receive a video recording a few hours later, giving her peace of mind that her house was cleaned properly and nothing was stolen or broken in her absence. 
Despite disclosures in the consent form she signed, Ahuja initially didn’t realize that there’s another purpose to the camera footage: AI training data. After a cleaning session, the video is stripped of personally identifiable information like personal documents and people’s faces and then sold to American AI companies. 
Bangalore-based Pronto launched the video recording service, called Pronto Verified, in May, stirring widespread backlash in India and government scrutiny over privacy concerns. Customers consent to the recording and workers are paid double for Pronto Verified bookings, CEO Anjali Sardana says. 
“Trillions of dollars are going into AI capex every year. All the money in the world is getting invested in AI, but your blue-collar worker in India is not capturing any of that,” Sardana, 24, tells Forbes. “And there is an opportunity to actually redistribute that capital.”
By Rashi Shrivastava,
Forbes Staff
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices