Our Story
The Karya story begins in 2016 at Microsoft Research India, when Co-Founders Manu Chopra and Vivek Seshadri had an idea about how to make language data collection more equitable and inclusive.
From 2016-2021, the idea of Karya underwent rigorous research that revealed two groundbreaking insights about the rural Indian workforce:
They exhibited immense enthusiasm towards digital work, especially work involving their native languages.
They consistently delivered high-quality output, with the dataset quality surpassing that of their urban counterparts. This was particularly evident among women workers who were found to be more efficient and accurate.
These invaluable findings drove the impetus to scale Karya across India. Through a generous seed grant and extended support from Microsoft Research India, Karya spun out in late 2021. During COVID, Karya ran as a four person team and learnt critical lessons about deploying digital work through fully remote interactions. In this time, Karya provided critical supplementary income to 15,000 low-income individuals. In mid-2022, Karya's team expanded to include more functions and Safiya Husain, joined as the third co-founder focused on developing Karya Learn and Karya Grow, their skilling and career programs.
In early 2023, with a transformational influx of support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The/Nudge and Dasra, Karya grew into a full organization. Karya currently has 25 full-time staff and a strong leadership team comprising the three co-founders alongside Nitin Jerath (Head of Design) and Jeevitha Sathishkumar (Head of Execution). The core teams are: Technology, Execution, Sales & Fundraising, Design and Research & Impact.
Karya's goal is to create pathways out of poverty for vulnerable and under-resourced communities across the world through AI-enabled digital work, skill development, and growth opportunities. Further, we aim to create an ecosystem where dignified digital work is the new status quo, and tirelessly advocate for the adoption of the Karya Public Data License and our Ethical Data Principles.
Karya's goal is to create pathways out of poverty for vulnerable and under-resourced communities across the world through AI-enabled digital work, skill development, and growth opportunities. Further, we aim to create an ecosystem where dignified digital work is the new status quo, and tirelessly advocate for the adoption of the Karya Public Data License and our Ethical Data Principles.
Karya was born in India as an idea, one that we believe to be the most scalable way to accelerate social mobility outcomes for hundreds of millions of low-income communities across the world. GiveDignifiedWork Inc was established in 2023 to facilitate this growth and evangelize our principles of ethical practice across the world.
