Nine annotation partners with delivery teams in India, compared on what they do, where the work happens, what security they state and what to check before you sign.
Updated 6 November 2026 · Indika AI editorial team
India is one of the largest delivery bases for AI training data. The companies below all do the work, or a large share of it, from India, but they differ a lot in what they are best at: some run large general crowds, some focus on domain experts, some sell ready-made datasets. Two of them changed owners in 2026.
We list Indika first because this is our guide; the rest follow no ranking. Use the criteria below to build your own shortlist, then run the same pilot with each.
| Company | Based | India delivery | Strongest at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indika AI | India | Yes | Domain-expert annotation, RLHF and evaluation |
| iMerit (EXL) | San Jose | Kolkata, Bengaluru | CV and GenAI programs at scale |
| NextWealth | Bengaluru | 11 small-town centres | High-volume annotation, catalogue |
| Cogito Tech | Levittown, NY | Noida | Managed CV, NLP, documents |
| DesiCrew | Chennai | Chennai | Language operations, annotation |
| Shaip | Louisville, KY | Ahmedabad | Datasets plus custom collection |
| TaskUs | US-listed | 4 cities | Large mixed service teams |
| Appen | Sydney / Kirkland | Hyderabad | Crowd scale, 235+ languages |
| Karya | Bengaluru | Rural India | Indian-language speech data |
Indika collects, labels, structures and monitors data for enterprise AI and model builders: annotation across text, image, audio, video and sensor data, RLHF and evaluation, and a vetted expert network for specialist review.
Founded in 2012, iMerit offers annotation and GenAI data work (RLHF, red-teaming, fine-tuning and evaluation), its Ango Hub annotation tool and a subject-matter expert network. It states 10,000+ active resources across 60+ countries.
Check: Ask how the EXL ownership affects your account team, contract terms and data handling.
NextWealth runs human-in-the-loop annotation (including LiDAR), GenAI work such as RLHF and red-teaming, trust and safety, and e-commerce catalogue services. It states 5,000+ specialists.
Cogito Tech, whose roots go back to 2011, offers managed human-in-the-loop data work across computer vision, NLP, content moderation and document processing, plus GenAI work (SFT, RLHF, red-teaming and evaluation).
Check: Its site shows compliance logos including SOC 2 and ISO 27001; ask for the current certificates and audit reports.
DesiCrew, operating since 2007, offers annotation, RLHF, trust and safety, model evaluation and LLM language operations, alongside enterprise process work. It states 22+ languages.
Shaip sells data collection, annotation and licensing, LLM data (SFT, RLHF and evaluation) and off-the-shelf speech, medical and computer-vision datasets. It states coverage of 150+ languages and dialects.
Check: Ask how the move into Ubiquity affects your contract and support.
TaskUs provides outsourced digital services: customer experience, trust and safety and a growing AI services line that includes data and annotation work. It reported FY2025 revenue of $1.184B and 65,500 people.
Check: Ask which of your work would run in India and how AI data teams are separated from other service lines.
Founded in 1996, Appen runs a crowd-sourced data service covering collection, annotation and evaluation. It states 1M+ contributors and 235+ languages, and its About page lists SOC 2 and ISO 27001.
Check: Ask which work runs through the open crowd and which through managed teams, and how contributors are vetted for your task.
Karya is a non-profit that pays rural Indian workers for digital data work. It provides speech, transcription and translation data, evaluations and India-specific datasets, and states speech coverage across the 22 official Indian languages.
Shortlist three. Send each the same sample of your data, the same guidelines and the same acceptance criteria, and ask for their certificates and audit reports rather than a questionnaire answer. Our seven-point buyer's checklist lists exactly what to ask.
There is no single best one. For specialist or regulated data, pick a partner with vetted domain experts and audited security; for very large general volume, a big crowd or BPO may cost less. Run the same pilot with two or three vendors and decide on the results.
EXL completed its acquisition of iMerit in August 2026, and Ubiquity announced an agreement to acquire Shaip in February 2026.
At least ISO 27001 for information security and a SOC 2 Type II report; ISO 9001 shows a managed quality process. If you handle EU personal data, ask how GDPR is met, and for Indian personal data, how the vendor prepares for the DPDP Act.
Yes. Indika offers a no-cost pilot on your own data, so you can judge the output before you commit.
Ask about a no-cost pilot on your own data and compare the output side by side.
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