The rural semi-arid state is rapidly transforming into a global hub of artificial intelligence (AI) training. This really is a watershed moment in the tech landscape. Mohan Kumar, a data preparation technician from Virudhunagar, a town in southeast India, holds up flyers for his fellow workers. He has a wonderful opportunity to lead this change direction. While working for Desicrew, Kumar creates data that’s key to training AI models. His work involves tasks such as transcription and correcting AI models when they confuse similar-looking items, ensuring that the technology can learn and improve over time.
Kumar’s workplace, Desicrew, is leading the charge among outsourced services. They’re great at software beta testing for start-ups, creating datasets for AI training, and content moderation. Currently, about 70% of Desicrew’s assignments come from clients around the world, especially in the United States and Europe. Kumar’s workforce is composed of around 70% women, which reflects the company’s commitment to inclusivity and empowerment in the workplace.
Kumar doesn’t see being located in a smaller town as a liability. He says that he is still getting a kick out of his job. He doesn’t underestimate the manner in which rural settings hold the key to India being the best place to operate in AI globally. Mannivannan J K, the chief executive of Desicrew, is convinced that rural centers can replicate the success of urban technology clusters. His big point is that these rural places all have very similar infrastructure and capacity.
“People often assume rural means underdeveloped, but our centres mirror urban IT hubs in every way – secure data access, reliable connectivity, and uninterrupted power. The only difference is geography.” – Mannivannan J K
Desicrew has seen a threefold increase in AI-related services. Today, these tasks account for 30-40% of its day-to-day activities. This figure is projected to increase to as much as 75 to 100% in the coming years. Kumar’s role in AI annotation involves collecting data from various sources, labeling it, and training AI models to recognize and predict objects. As these models continue to grow more semi-supervised, they become better at making more informed decisions on their own.
“My role is in AI annotation. I collect data from various sources, label it, and train AI models so they can recognize and predict objects. Over time, the models become semi-supervised and can make decisions on their own.” – Mohan Kumar
The ramifications of this changing environment get deeper. New technologies and a growing need for technological expertise are changing the face of India’s small towns and cities. These fields combined have the potential to produce upwards of 100 million jobs in development, validation and real-time management over the next three-to-five years.
We’re excited to have Mythily Ramesh adding her voice to this initiative. She points to the importance of harnessing talent from small town graduates. She notes that 60% of India’s graduates come from rural backgrounds. IT companies don’t want to hire anywhere but metropolitan areas. Unfortunately, this trend is leaving a potential pool of talented professionals almost entirely underserved.
“Sixty percent of India’s graduates come from small towns, but most IT companies hire only from the metros. That leaves behind a huge untapped pool of smart, first-generation graduates.” – Mythily Ramesh
Ramesh points out that most of these students are the first in their families to graduate. They’ve arrived from farming, weaving, and law-enforcement backgrounds. Their fight for education puts them in a position where their parents have to make those same financial sacrifices.
“Many of these students are first-generation graduates. Their parents are farmers, weavers, tailors, policemen – families who take loans to fund their education.” – Mythily Ramesh
Kumar’s work doesn’t just create new technological innovations, it introduces new transformative opportunities to his community. Their capacity to put families into well-paying jobs in their own communities creates opportunities for families to achieve financial stability and invest in their children’s education.
“For many, this is their first salaried job, and the impact on their families is transformative – from financial security to education for their children.” – Mannivannan J K
As the demand for AI keeps accelerating worldwide, the urgency to get our hands on human-labeled data only increases. Each sophisticated AI model needs terabytes of precisely annotated data to operate brilliantly. The incoming opportunity creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity for rural workers such as Kumar who help power what’s referred to as “cloud-farming jobs.”
“Every AI model, from a ChatGPT-like system to facial recognition, needs vast amounts of human-labelled data. That is the backbone of cloud-farming jobs.” – Mythily Ramesh
Desicrew has a pretty novel solution of reducing the commuting distance and time by taking the jobs to candidates’ homes. Their goal is to stop the flow of people needing to move to cities to find jobs. This strategy is a powerful economic stimulus at the local level. It fills the opportunity divide that rural youth experience between education and profession.
“We realised that instead of forcing people to migrate to cities in search of jobs, we could bring jobs to where people already live.” – Mannivannan J K
What inspires Kumar and his colleagues to keep working in rural India is the continued traction. Their advocacy plays an important role in a big-picture story about the changing relationship between technology industries and employment. Their work illustrates the potential for talent to succeed outside of metropolitan areas while still being positioned to serve the needs of an ever-growing global market.