Pronto Faces Scrutiny Over In-Home Camera Pilot
The home-services startup says the pilot is opt-in and limited, but reports on household recordings for physical AI have raised questions over consent, surveillance and data use.
Topics
Pronto is facing regulatory and industry scrutiny over a camera-based pilot that records some household-service jobs, after investor material cited in a media report linked the startup’s home-service footage to physical AI and robotics training.
The controversy began after Entrackr reported that investor documents from Glade Brook Capital described Pronto as generating real-world data to help train physical AI and robotics.
The memo said the company was “piloting real world training data with leading physical AI labs” and “developing a data business leveraging its workforce to capture real-world household data for robotics labs,” according to Entrackr.
Pronto, responding to Entrackr, acknowledged that it has been running a limited pilot around AI-related data initiatives. The company said customers can voluntarily choose to have jobs recorded, with a professional carrying “a small camera that faces outward at the work,” and that customers receive the footage afterward.
The startup said physical AI systems require real-world behavioral data, including first-person videos of people performing tasks such as washing dishes and folding laundry in real environments. Work performed by its service professionals can form a “foundational data layer for physical AI,” Pronto told Entrackr.
Pronto has defended the pilot as limited and customer-controlled. The company said the feature is chosen by the customer at the time of booking, job by job, and that it has no plans to extend the pilot to most customers. It also said faces and identifying details are blurred automatically, no personally identifiable information is uploaded or shared, and footage is deleted within 48 hours.
The issue has drawn government attention. Moneycontrol reported that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has taken cognizance of the controversy and is looking into the matter, citing people in the government. The report said the ministry is examining concerns around surveillance, consent and the use of customer-home data for AI systems.
The central question is whether consent for recording a service visit is sufficient if household footage may also be used to develop AI datasets. India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, requires consent to be free, specific, informed, unconditional and unambiguous, and tied to a specified purpose. That makes purpose limitation and transparency central issues in any AI-linked reuse of home recordings.
Privacy experts cited by Moneycontrol said the concern is not only the recordings themselves but the lack of clarity over how such data could eventually be used by AI systems.
The controversy has pushed rivals to distance themselves from in-home recording.
Urban Company co-founder Abhiraj Singh Bhal said the company does not record inside customers’ homes and has no plans to do so.
In light of recent reports regarding recordings inside customers’ homes by one of our competitors, many people have asked whether @urbancompany_UC engages in anything similar, or intends to do so in the future.
The answer is clear and unequivocal: we do not.
We are in the…
— Abhiraj Singh Bhal (@abhirajbhal) May 24, 2026
Snabbit founder Aayush Agarwal said in a LinkedIn post that no customer’s home had ever been recorded by the company and that customers’ privacy was “absolute.” He said Snabbit had studied the technology after being approached by outside players, but had not deployed it in customer homes.
The scrutiny comes as Pronto expands rapidly in India’s instant home-services market. Reuters reported earlier this month that the company raised an additional $20 million in Series B funding from investor Lachy Groom, doubling its valuation to $200 million in two months. The startup had raised $25 million in March from Epiq Capital, Glade Brook Capital, General Catalyst and Bain Capital Ventures at a $100 million valuation.
Pronto offers household services including laundry, kitchen preparation and home cleaning, with workers available within 15 minutes. Its daily bookings rose from 3,000 in early December to more than 26,000, Chief Executive Officer Anjali Sardana told Reuters.
The broader market is also growing quickly. Moneycontrol, citing a Morgan Stanley note, reported that monthly active users across Urban Company, Pronto and Snabbit reached 10.4 million in March, with Pronto accounting for 2.7 million users.
