Is Pronto following you? Bengaluru startup admits to filming house cleaners to train physical AI, sparks privacy debate

Bengaluru-based startup Pronto, which provides home services within 10 minutes, has come under fire for allegedly recording a video at a customer’s home while a professional cleans.

The move came to light after Entracker, which describes itself as an independent platform for tracking the emerging internet economy, issued a report citing investor documents that suggested the home services startup was making on-demand videos to train AI robotics.

The news sent customers into a frenzy over privacy concerns as Pronto reportedly admitted it had launched a pilot tracking data to train artificial intelligence (AI) models.

Pronto capturing real household data

Entracker’s report cited an internal report from one of Pronto’s investors, Glade Brook Capital. He reportedly said, “Pronto is trying to formalize India’s vast informal labor markets and in the process generate data that will help train physical AI and robotics.”

The memo goes on to say that the company is already “piloting real-world training data with leading physical AI labs.”

The report cited another investor note that said Pronto is “developing a data store using its workforce to acquire real household data for robotics labs.”

He added that the early interest in the partnership is “encouraging” and that the company is “advancing rapidly to commercialize the strategy”.

Customer choice for recording jobs: Pronto

In response to the report, Pronto acknowledged it had launched a limited pilot of AI-related data initiatives and said customers could voluntarily choose to log jobs.

The startup clarified that the professional carries “a small camera that faces outwards while working,” and customers then receive the footage.

Pronto reportedly stressed that it needed to capture “first-person video of people doing real-world tasks like washing dishes and folding laundry in real-world environments” to train physical AI systems.

Physical AI refers to artificial intelligence systems that operate in and interact with the physical world, rather than existing only in software or a digital environment.

Pronto said capturing real-world behavioral data — in the form of work done by its professionals — forms the foundational layer of physical AI.

Why the commotion?

The news has caused widespread uproar among urban professionals, who often rely on home services to take care of domestic activities in their relatively busy lifestyles.

But the biggest problem is that unlike other app-based platforms that track user behavior through clicks and cookies, Pronto resorts to recording in one of the most private environments possible – people’s homes.

And while the vision of training physical AI with real-world data — so that repetitive human work can eventually be automated — is exciting for investors, privacy remains a big concern.

Pronto claimed that the video recording was limited to a pilot project and rejected a large-scale deployment. The startup told Entracker that the pilot program is “strictly opt-in and customer-selected at booking, job-by-job,” adding that “no one is in it by default” and “has no plans to roll it out to most customers.”

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Meanwhile, Pronto CEO and co-founder Anjali Sardana said the pilot covers 0.1% of users and is aimed at customers who don’t feel uncomfortable letting unknown workers into their homes while they’re away.

“They worry about what happens in their house during the reservation. Something might be stolen or broken or the work might not be done properly,” Sardana told The Times of India.

Pronto has raised $20 million from AI robotics

Earlier this month, Pronto received a $20 million expansion investment led by Lachy Groom, co-founder of AI robotics company Physical Intelligence and an early backer of rapid trading firm Zepto.

The company closed its Series B funding round at $45 million, doubling its valuation to $200 million per month. As a result, Pronto said its daily bookings increased to 26,000, while its workforce grew to 6,500 professionals.

With the latest infusion, Pronto has raised about $60 million to date, with investors including General Catalyst, Bain Capital Ventures, Glade Brook and Epiq Capital.

Founded in 2025, Pronto connects urban households with trained professionals with proven backgrounds for everyday tasks such as cleaning, laundry and meal preparation.

What Urban Company, Snabbit said:

Pronto’s competitors in the on-demand home services industry – Urban Company and Snabbit – quickly responded to the dispute by explaining that they never engaged in video recording of their professionals.

In a post on the X social media platform, Urban Company CEO Abhiraj Singh Bhal said that his company does not record in customers’ homes, nor does it plan to do so in the future.

“In light of the recent reports of recordings inside customers’ homes by one of our competitors, many people have been asking whether Urban Company has engaged in anything similar, or intends to do so in the future. The answer is clear and unequivocal: no,” he wrote.

Snabbit founder Aayush Agarwal issued a similar statement on X:

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