Two months ago, Pronto was on the back foot, fielding tough questions about why its workers were carrying cameras into people's homes. This week, the same feature showed up again, except now it has a name, a price tag, and its own place in the app menu.
The Bengaluru-based instant home services startup has widened its in-home camera programme under a new offering called Pronto Verified, turning what began as a quiet, controversial pilot into a paid, opt-in product. Each Verified session has to be booked individually for now, at an added cost that covers a certified service partner, camera equipment, and guaranteed scheduling, with recurring bookings expected to follow later.
The backstory here matters. Back in May, reports citing internal investor documents revealed that Pronto's outward-facing cameras were capturing footage during everyday chores like cleaning and laundry, material the company was said to be feeding into physical AI and robotics training. The disclosure triggered a privacy uproar, drew the attention of India's IT Ministry, and pushed rivals like Urban Company and Snabbit to publicly distance themselves from any similar recording inside customer homes.
Pronto's response then was to frame the camera use as strictly opt-in, chosen job by job at the time of booking, with faces automatically blurred, no personal data shared, and footage deleted within 48 hours. Rolling it out now as Pronto Verified suggests the company sees real demand for the feature itself, rather than treating it purely as a data-collection experiment on the side.
Founded in April 2025 by Anjali Sardana, Pronto handles more than 25,000 household orders a day across 11 Indian cities and has raised roughly $60 million to date, including backing from Lachy Groom, a co-founder of Physical Intelligence. Whether customers will pay extra just to be watched while their laundry gets folded is the real test Pronto Verified is about to face.
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Startup Unplugged
