Karya

Many communities across the globe face significant economic challenges, not due to a lack of capability, but because traditional economic systems were not designed for them. Factors like language, gender, geography, and societal norms often lock entire communities out of fair and dignified work opportunities. This exclusion is particularly pronounced in the digital economy, where access to meaningful, well-paying work is often limited to those with specific skills and in urban centers. For instance, in India alone, over 204 million women do not leave their homes daily, limiting their ability to earn an income. Furthermore, with over 19,000 dialects in India and fewer than 100 being digitally documented, many are forced to abandon their mother tongues to participate in the digital world. This creates a digital divide that exacerbates economic disparities and threatens cultural heritage.

Karya was founded to address these challenges head-on by creating a more inclusive and ethical digital economy. We provide a smartphone-based platform that offers dignified digital work to individuals in rural and marginalized communities, enabling them to earn fair wages without needing to migrate or have high digital literacy. Our customers, who are building the next generation of AI, need vast amounts of high-quality, diverse, and ethically sourced data. We meet this need by connecting them with a trained workforce that can generate and annotate data in over 50 Indian languages. This not only ensures that AI systems are more representative and perform better for everyone but also provides a sustainable income source for our workers. We are committed to paying our workers at least 20 times the Indian minimum wage and have implemented a model where they own their data and earn royalties from its use, ensuring they have a lasting stake in the value they create. Through this model, we are proving that technology can be a powerful force for economic empowerment and social change, creating a future where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.