Is Pronto watching you? Bengaluru startup admits filming cleaners in homes to train physical AI, sparks privacy debate

Bengaluru-based startup Pronto, which provides domestic services in 10 minutes, has come under fire for reportedly video recording inside the customer's house while the professional is cleaning.

The move came to light after Entracker, which describes itself as an independent platform to track the emerging internet economy, released a report citing investor documents which indicated that the on-demand household services startup was recording videos to train AI-enabled robotics.

The report has sent customers into a tizzy over privacy concerns, as Pronto reportedly admitted to running a pilot on tracking data to train artificial intelligence (AI) models.

The memo further stated that the company is already “piloting real world training data with leading physical AI labs.”

The report cited another investor note which stated that Pronto is “developing a data business leveraging its workforce to capture real-world household data for robotics labs.”

It added that early partnership interest has been “encouraging” and that the company is “moving quickly to commercialise the strategy.”

The startup clarified that the professional carries “a small camera that faces outward at the work,” and customers receive the footage afterward.

Pronto reportedly underlined that it needed to capture “a first-person video of people doing real tasks, such as washing dishes and folding laundry, in real 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 digital environments.

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

The biggest issue, however, is that unlike other app-based platforms which track user behaviour through clicks and cookies, Pronto is resorting to recording in one of the most private environments possible — people's homes.

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

Pronto has asserted that the video recording is limited to a pilot and denied large-scale deployment. The startup told Entracker that the pilot is “strictly opt-in and chosen by the customer at booking, job by job,” adding that “by default, no one is in it” and that it has “no plans to extend it to the majority of customers.”

Meanwhile, Pronto CEO and co-founder Anjali Sardana said the pilot covers 0.1% of users and is meant for customers who feel uneasy about allowing unfamiliar workers into their homes while they are away.

“They worry about what's happening in their home during their booking. Something may be stolen or broken, or work may not be done properly,” Sardana told The Times of India.

The company closed its Series B funding round at $45 million, doubling its valuation to $200 million in about a month. With this, Pronto said its daily bookings have scaled 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, background-verified professionals for daily chores such as cleaning, laundry, and meal preparation.

In a post on social media platform X, Urban Company CEO Abhiraj Singh Bhal said his firm neither engages in recording inside customers’ homes nor plans to do so in the future.

“In light of recent reports regarding recordings inside customers’ homes by one of our competitors, many people have asked whether Urban Company engages in anything similar, or intends to do so in the future. The answer is clear and unequivocal: we do not,” he wrote.

Snabbit founder Aayush Agarwal put out a similar statement on X: