This startup is betting India’s gig economy can train the world’s robots
In the last few years, India’s online food delivery market has grown significantly, with both Zomato and Swiggy going public and an increase in the number of cloud kitchens. Meanwhile, startups working on home services, such as on-demand household staffing platforms like Urban Company, Snabbit, and Pronto, have gained popularity. Silicon Valley-based start-up Human Archive is tapping into this trend, partnering with these companies to have workers wear special caps with cameras to collect egocentric (first-person point of view) video data of everyday tasks that could be used to train robots. Without naming specific partners, the startup said it is working with companies in the home services, hostel, and restaurant sectors to collect egocentric data, and it says it has more than 1,000 active headsets deployed across multiple locations. On the back of that traction, Human Archive said Tuesday it has raised $8.2 million in funding from Wing Venture Capital, NVP Capital, Y Combinator, and angels from OpenAI, Nvidia, Google, Mercor, AfterQuery, BAIR, SAIL, Brad Boa, and Meta. The startup was founded by two Berkeley …
