AI watching you at home? Pronto faces backlash over footage pilot; Urban Company, Snabbit founders react
Bengaluru startup Pronto is under fire after investor documents revealed it films inside customers' homes to train physical AI, prompting Urban Company and Snabbit to publicly distance themselves.
5 Min Read
Bengaluru-based home services startup Pronto is at the centre of a privacy storm after reports emerged that it may be using footage recorded inside customers' homes to train artificial intelligence and robotics systems.
The controversy began when X user Harsh Upadhyay alleged that Pronto professionals were using small outward-facing body cameras during select opt-in jobs.
The claims spread rapidly, triggering concerns about AI surveillance inside private homes.
What Is Pronto?
Pronto is led by 23-year-old CEO Anjali Sardana, who launched the company in April 2025, shortly after graduating from Georgetown University with a degree in biology.
The Bengaluru-based app connects households with trained domestic workers for services including cleaning, mopping, washing utensils, laundry and meal preparation, promising workers on demand within roughly 10 minutes.
Pronto claims that it handles around 18,000 bookings a day, up from around 1,000 last year.
Physical AI refers to artificial intelligence that operates in the real world through machines and robots — systems designed to eventually perform tasks such as mopping floors, cooking food or assisting elderly people. Building such systems requires large volumes of real-world data, making footage of domestic tasks commercially valuable to AI and robotics firms.
Pronto acknowledged the issue and released a statement on X, saying: "Unless you have opted in and paid for the program personally, the Pro doesn't come to the house with a camera."
The company added that consent must be reaffirmed before every booking and that the pilot covers only 0.1% of customers. It said faces and identifying details are blurred automatically, no personally identifiable information is uploaded or shared, and footage is deleted within 48 hours.
Pronto also said it had spent months ensuring compliance with India's Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, and noted that it was "not the only company in the space doing this".
However, when asked about the pilot's terms and conditions, Pronto did not share specific details. Legal experts point out that, under India's DPDP Act, agreeing to recordings for monitoring purposes is legally different from consenting to their use as AI training data. This has raised questions about whether Pronto's consent framework satisfies the law's purpose-limitation requirements.
The backlash also had direct consequences for one user. An X user who publicly questioned the company's practices reported that her Pronto account was restricted after her post went viral. According to the user, the account had been functioning normally beforehand.
Rivals Draw the Line
Urban Company co-founder and CEO Abhiraj Singh Bhal moved quickly to address concerns, stating that Urban Company does not engage in any such recording activities, has never done so, and has no plans to do so. "We are in the business of trust," he wrote, adding that customer privacy remained "paramount".
Snabbit founder Aayush Agarwal issued a similar statement. "Since this morning, people have reached out asking whether Snabbit does anything similar to the recent reports about a competitor recording inside customers' homes. The answer is clear and unequivocal: We do not," he wrote. "No customer's home has ever been recorded by us, in any way."
Agarwal then disclosed that Snabbit had been approached to set up a similar system. "In the interest of transparency: yes, we were approached by several players and yes, we have studied how this technology works. But understanding something and deploying it in our customers' homes are two very different things. We have not done the latter, have no partnership with anyone in this regard, and have no intention of changing that," he said.
The controversy began when X user Harsh Upadhyay alleged that Pronto professionals were using small outward-facing body cameras during select opt-in jobs.
Important: How Pronto is turning Indian homes into training grounds for its investors’ Physical AI vision
Did you know? Pronto professionals use small outward-facing cameras during select opt-in jobs, and customers receive the footage afterward.
=> In an internal memo, Glade…
— Harsh Upadhyay (@upadhyay_harsh1) May 22, 2026
He cited an internal memo from investor Glade Brook Capital, which stated that "Pronto is seeking to formalise India's vast informal labour markets and, in the process, generate data to help train physical AI and robotics," and that the company was already "piloting real-world training data with leading physical AI labs."
The claims spread rapidly, triggering concerns about AI surveillance inside private homes.
What Is Pronto?
Pronto is led by 23-year-old CEO Anjali Sardana, who launched the company in April 2025, shortly after graduating from Georgetown University with a degree in biology.
The Bengaluru-based app connects households with trained domestic workers for services including cleaning, mopping, washing utensils, laundry and meal preparation, promising workers on demand within roughly 10 minutes.
Pronto claims that it handles around 18,000 bookings a day, up from around 1,000 last year.
Physical AI refers to artificial intelligence that operates in the real world through machines and robots — systems designed to eventually perform tasks such as mopping floors, cooking food or assisting elderly people. Building such systems requires large volumes of real-world data, making footage of domestic tasks commercially valuable to AI and robotics firms.
Pronto acknowledged the issue and released a statement on X, saying: "Unless you have opted in and paid for the program personally, the Pro doesn't come to the house with a camera."
Unless you have opted-in and paid for the program personally, the Pro doesn't come to the house with a camera. Opt in is not one time, it has to be affirmed before each booking. By default there is no camera involved, and when there is, it's impossible to miss. The pilot reaches… https://t.co/Fqnw76Mk4N
— Pronto (@withpronto) May 24, 2026
The company added that consent must be reaffirmed before every booking and that the pilot covers only 0.1% of customers. It said faces and identifying details are blurred automatically, no personally identifiable information is uploaded or shared, and footage is deleted within 48 hours.
Pronto also said it had spent months ensuring compliance with India's Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, and noted that it was "not the only company in the space doing this".
However, when asked about the pilot's terms and conditions, Pronto did not share specific details. Legal experts point out that, under India's DPDP Act, agreeing to recordings for monitoring purposes is legally different from consenting to their use as AI training data. This has raised questions about whether Pronto's consent framework satisfies the law's purpose-limitation requirements.
The backlash also had direct consequences for one user. An X user who publicly questioned the company's practices reported that her Pronto account was restricted after her post went viral. According to the user, the account had been functioning normally beforehand.
Rivals Draw the Line
Urban Company co-founder and CEO Abhiraj Singh Bhal moved quickly to address concerns, stating that Urban Company does not engage in any such recording activities, has never done so, and has no plans to do so. "We are in the business of trust," he wrote, adding that customer privacy remained "paramount".
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 issued a similar statement. "Since this morning, people have reached out asking whether Snabbit does anything similar to the recent reports about a competitor recording inside customers' homes. The answer is clear and unequivocal: We do not," he wrote. "No customer's home has ever been recorded by us, in any way."
Since this morning, people have reached out asking whether @just_snabbit does anything similar to the recent reports about a competitor recording inside customers' homes.
The answer is clear and unequivocal: We do not.
No customer's home has ever been recorded by us, in any…
— Aayush Agarwal (@Aa_Agarwl) May 24, 2026
Agarwal then disclosed that Snabbit had been approached to set up a similar system. "In the interest of transparency: yes, we were approached by several players and yes, we have studied how this technology works. But understanding something and deploying it in our customers' homes are two very different things. We have not done the latter, have no partnership with anyone in this regard, and have no intention of changing that," he said.
Source link
