karya
Karya is a non-profit AI data and evaluation platform that pays low-income workers across India, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Bangladesh to create high-quality Indic-language datasets, speech corpora, and LLM evaluations for frontier AI labs, governments, and foundations.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2021
- HeadquartersKalba Devi, India
- Headcount101–250
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What karya does
Karya (legally DAIA Tech Pvt. Ltd.) is a non-profit data and AI infrastructure company founded in 2021 and headquartered in Bengaluru, India, that builds end-to-end pipelines for AI data collection, evaluation, and deployment while providing dignified digital work to low-income communities. The company's core technology is its AI-enabled Platform by Karya, which supports audio, NLP, computer vision, RLHF, and LLM evaluation tasks across 70+ languages (with depth across 22 official Indian languages), delivered through a multilingual Android app and chat-based interface. Complementary products include Samiksha (a multilingual LLM evaluation pipeline grounded in 11 Indian languages and 4 high-impact domains), Samudaye (a government of India-backed worker engagement platform), and Karya Learn (a tiered skilling initiative with a Digital Skills Passport paying workers $5-$25/hour). The platform supports specialized tools such as the Gender-Intentional Data Tool (Project Sanmati) and frameworks like Kahani for culturally grounded AI storytelling.
Karya monetizes through four streams: (1) B2B data services and custom dataset creation for frontier AI labs including Microsoft Research, Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI; (2) government contracts with bodies such as the Maharashtra State Government and Karnataka Health Promotion Trust; (3) foundation grants including a USD 2 million Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant (2023) and a USD 1 million Google.org grant (November 2024); and (4) platform licensing via a PaaS model piloted globally with the Mastercard Centre for Inclusive Growth. Go-to-market combines enterprise field sales to AI companies, direct-to-consumer worker onboarding through mobile app, and channel partnerships with NGOs such as Digital Green (Kenya) and Leyu (Ethiopia). Pricing for the platform's consumer-facing tiers ranges from ₹4.99/month (Basic) to ₹17.99/month (Premium), while worker-side pay ranges from $5/hour for basic voice recording to $25/hour for advanced technical language work, reportedly up to 20 times local minimum wage. As of January 2026, the platform had onboarded 134,565 workers across 5 countries, completed 65 million tasks, and distributed USD 3.2 million in cumulative wages.
karya firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- karya
- Legal name
- DAIA Tech Pvt. Ltd.
- Website
- https://karya.in
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2021
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 101–250 employees
- Short description
- Karya is a non-profit AI data and evaluation platform that pays low-income workers across India, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Bangladesh to create high-quality Indic-language datasets, speech corpora, and LLM evaluations for frontier AI labs, governments, and foundations.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
karya industry classification
Industry- Product category
- AI Data Annotation Platform
- NAICS
- Custom Computer Programming Services (541511), Translation and Interpretation Services (541930), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (518)
- SIC
- Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370), Services-Prepackaged Software (7372), Services-Computer Processing & Data Preparation (7374)
- akta.pro primary industry
- NLP Developer Tools & Evaluation (prompting, testing, benchmarks) (HDAAADAK)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- Machine Translation & Multilingual NLP (HDAAADAD), Speech Translation & Multilingual Speech Tech (HDAAAFAE), AI Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) Platforms (HDAAAMAA)
Keywords
Where karya is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Kalba Devi
- HQ country
- India
- HQ region
- Asia
Offices2 records
Markets served
karya business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Others
Revenue model
- B2B Data Services: Custom data solutions for AI companies including domain-specific transcription, localized translation, and multimodal dataset creation at scale. Clients include Microsoft Research, Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI.
- Government Contracts: Projects with Indian government bodies including Maharashtra State Government, Karnataka Health Promotion Trust, and various ministries for AI data and evaluation services.
- Foundation Grants: Funding from philanthropic organizations including Gates Foundation (USD 2 million grant), Mastercard Centre for Inclusive Growth, and other donors for specific projects and capacity building.
- Platform Licensing: Platform-as-a-Service offering allowing external organizations to deploy ethical digital work projects using Karya's technology infrastructure.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Monthly | Standard Plan - Mid-tier pricing for growing businesses |
| Subscription | Monthly | Premium Plan - Enterprise tier for large organizations |
| Subscription | Monthly | Basic Plan - Entry-level for initial evaluation |
| Usage-based | Pay-as-you-go | Basic voice recording tasks |
| Usage-based | Pay-as-you-go | Advanced technical language work |
| Usage-based | Pay-as-you-go | Technical language tasks |
Go-to-market motion3 records
Distribution channels4 records
Marketing channels5 records
karya product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Karya operates a platform-powered AI data collection and evaluation service, engaging a workforce of 134,565 workers across 5 countries to produce speech, text, image, and video datasets in 70+ languages, with focus on low-resource Indic languages. Through its Platform by Karya and proprietary Samiksha evaluation framework, the company delivers custom data solutions, domain-specific transcription, localized translation, RLHF, and LLM evaluation pipelines to frontier AI labs, research institutions, and government bodies.
Product overview
Karya operates as a platform-plus-modules architecture providing end-to-end pipelines across data collection, evaluation, and deployment for AI systems. The core offering is the Platform by Karya, an AI-enabled system for creating and deploying data tasks across Audio, NLP, Computer Vision, RLHF, and LLM Evaluation. Complementary products include Samiksha (multilingual LLM evaluation pipeline), Samudaye (worker engagement platform), Karya Learn with Digital Skills Passport (worker skilling), and the Karya Institute (research arm). The ecosystem also includes specialized projects like the TB Q&A Bot, Kahani storytelling framework, and Indigenous Recipes Project, all leveraging the underlying data infrastructure. The company also offers data services including Generation, Annotation, and Digitization across Audio, Text, Image, and Video data types.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- Karya Institute: An internal think tank to study how AI will transform the future of work across the Global South, conducting research across markets, skilling, and labour.
- Samudaye
- Samiksha
- Sanmati
Products and services
- Platform by Karya AI-enabled platform to create, customize, and deploy data tasks across audio, NLP, computer vision, RLHF, and LLM evaluation; serves enterprise AI labs, research institutions, and government bodies via direct sales and Platform-as-a-Service licensing.
- Samiksha Evaluation Framework Multilingual evaluation pipeline that tests large language models against real, everyday Indian contexts across 11 Indian languages and 4 high-impact domains (health, education, finance, legal); combines expert consultation, paid end-user contributions, and large-scale automated evaluation. Designed for AI labs needing India-contextual benchmarks.
- Samudaye Platform that brings low-income and rural digital workers into India's digital economy, enabling public and non-government entities to issue tasks with wage transparency, living-wage benchmarks, skill certification, and clear standards of engagement. Built with The/Nudge Institute for Government of India deployment.
- B2B Data Collection & Annotation Services Custom data solutions for frontier AI companies and government bodies including domain-specific transcription, localized translation, and multimodal dataset creation across speech, text, image, and video in 70+ languages. Clients include Microsoft Research, Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI.
- Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) Licensing of Platform by Karya technology to external organizations (e.g., Digital Green in Kenya, Leyu in Ethiopia) so they can deploy ethical digital work projects in their own contexts with Karya's infrastructure.
Quantifiable outcome
- 6.8x year-on-year increase in worker wages
- +6 more outcomes
Companies that use karya
Customer profileNamed customers10 records
Segments4 records
Ideal customer profiles4 records
karya technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
AI capability9 records
Feature4 records
karya partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
14 partnerships are on record, tiered core and supporting.
- AnthropiccoreCollaboration with Anthropic to deploy AI models in digital infrastructure, education, agricultural productivity, and healthcare across the Global South. Anthropic has entered partnerships with Indian nonprofits including Karya to apply AI models to various sectors and evaluate model performance across Indian languages.
- Microsoft ResearchcoreCollaboration on Samiksha evaluation framework and various data collection projects including conversational speech data and LLM evaluations.
- GooglecorePartnership for Project Vaani (speech data collection) and translation projects covering 16 long-tail languages with 1.6M+ words translated.
- OpenAIcorePartnership for AI data collection and joint delivery of Nonprofit AI Jam sessions in India across Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kolkata, and New Delhi.
- Mozilla FoundationsupportingPartnership established in August 2025 to support work across conversational data.
- Digital GreensupportingPlatform deployment partner in Kenya for deploying ethical digital work using Karya's platform technology.
- PrathamcoreCollaboration on educational initiatives and AI tools for learning in India.
- Central Square FoundationsupportingPartnership on education initiatives and public sector AI collaborations.
- EkStep FoundationcoreNon-profit partner in the Astitva Prakalp project for Dehwali Bhili language AI model development.
- AI4Bharat at IIT MadrascoreResearch partner in the Astitva Prakalp project providing technical expertise for language AI model development.
- Karnataka Health Promotion Trust (KHPT)coreBIRAC and Grand Challenges India-supported project for adolescent health datasets and technology development.
- Government of IndiacoreMultiple collaborations to build and open source critical contextual datasets and digital public goods. Partner on Samiksha evaluation framework and various AI initiatives.
- Aapti InstitutesupportingPartnership to develop Code of Conduct for ethical data work, formalizing principles around fair pay, informed consent, grievance redressal, and transparency.
- The/Nudge InstitutecorePartnership on Samudaye platform and various digital livelihoods initiatives.
Scale indicators13 records
Recent moves9 records
Expansion highlights7 records
karya competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Sama: Provides ethical AI data annotation and model evaluation services, with operations in East Africa and India and a mission-focused positioning on dignified digital work. Closest mission-aligned peer to Karya — both serve frontier AI clients while explicitly employing low-income workers at fair wages.
- Toloka AI: Crowdsourcing platform for AI data labeling across diverse languages and modalities, with strong presence in emerging markets. Directly comparable to Karya's Platform by Karya in offering scalable, distributed data annotation for AI model development.
- Surge AI: Specialized data labeling platform focused on RLHF and nuanced NLP tasks for frontier AI labs. Comparable to Karya in serving frontier model developers with high-quality human evaluation, though Surge operates primarily with skilled contract annotators rather than rural digital workers.
- CloudFactory: Cloud-based workforce provider for AI data labeling, with operations in Nepal and Kenya employing workers from underserved communities. Comparable to Karya in mission-aligned employment model and AI data services for enterprise clients.
- Labelbox: Data labeling and evaluation platform for AI applications, serving enterprises building production ML systems. Comparable to Karya's Platform by Karya in offering annotation tooling and workforce management for AI data pipelines.
- Defined.ai: Provides ethical AI training data including speech, text, and multimodal datasets across many languages, with a focus on fair compensation and transparency. Comparable to Karya in multilingual data offerings and ethical positioning, though operates as a data marketplace rather than a workforce platform.
- iMerit: India-based data annotation and AI services company providing workforce solutions for AI/ML pipelines across computer vision, NLP, and content services. Directly comparable given Indian operational base, focus on skilled workforce development, and enterprise AI customer base.
Emerging players
- AI4Bharat: Open-source language AI research group at IIT Madras focused on Indic-language NLP, including datasets, models, and benchmarks. A research partner to Karya on Astitva Prakalp but a comparable emerging player in the Indic-language AI ecosystem with overlapping speech and NLP dataset capabilities.
Broad incumbents
- Scale AI: One of the largest AI data labeling and evaluation platforms globally, serving frontier AI labs with annotation across text, image, speech, and RLHF. Directly comparable to Karya in customer base (frontier labs) and core offering (high-quality training data), though Scale operates at far broader geographic and language scale.
- Appen: Global leader in training data for AI, providing data annotation, collection, and evaluation across 235+ languages. Comparable to Karya in multilingual speech and text annotation, but operates at vastly larger scale and with a more commercial (vs. mission-focused) model.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks5 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
karya social profiles
Digital presencekarya financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
karya leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles15 records
karya funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds2 records
Investors2 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
karya M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about karya
What does karya do?
Karya operates a platform-powered AI data collection and evaluation service, engaging a workforce of 134,565 workers across 5 countries to produce speech, text, image, and video datasets in 70+ languages, with focus on low-resource Indic languages. Through its Platform by Karya and proprietary Samiksha evaluation framework, the company delivers custom data solutions, domain-specific transcription, localized translation, RLHF, and LLM evaluation pipelines to frontier AI labs, research institutions, and government bodies.
Is karya a public or private company?
karya is a private company. It is classified as founder individual operated bootstrapped and is currently operating.
When was karya founded?
karya was founded in 2021. It employs 101 to 250 people.
Where is karya based?
karya is headquartered in Kalba Devi, India, in the Asia region.
How does karya make money?
Four revenue lines are on record. B2B Data Services are the primary driver. The others are government Contracts, foundation Grants and platform Licensing.
Who are karya's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Sama, Toloka AI, Surge AI, CloudFactory, Labelbox, Defined.ai and iMerit. AI4Bharat is listed as an emerging player. Broad incumbents are Scale AI and Appen.
Does karya have an API?
No public API is recorded for karya.
What industry is karya in?
karya's product category is AI Data Annotation Platform. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HDAAADAK, NLP Developer Tools & Evaluation (prompting, testing, benchmarks), with a secondary code of HDAAADAD, Machine Translation & Multilingual NLP. Its NAICS code is 541511 and its SIC code is 7370.