Transforming Rural India: The Rise of AI Training Centers

Thu Oct 16 2025 13:46:26 GMT+0300 (Eastern European Summer Time)

In a surprising shift, rural towns like Virudhunagar are becoming centers for artificial intelligence training, providing opportunities for local professionals while preserving their traditional lifestyles.

Virudhunagar, a small town in southeastern India, is witnessing a tech revolution as locals like Mohan Kumar engage in AI-related work. As urban IT jobs migrate to rural areas for cost efficiency, companies such as Desicrew and NextWealth are pioneering 'cloud farming,' which brings high-tech jobs to remote locales, ensuring that emerging AI opportunities are accessible to rural populations. With a focus on inclusivity, these firms aim to empower local youth, especially women, by providing quality careers closer to home, while facing challenges in perceptions and infrastructure.

Virudhunagar, a town in southeastern India, can boast temples that date back thousands of years. But not far from those ancient sites, people are working on the latest tech - artificial intelligence.

One of those is Mohan Kumar. 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, he says.

India has long been a centre for outsourced IT support, with cities like Bangalore or Chennai being traditional hubs for such work. But in recent years firms have been moving that work into much more remote areas, where costs for staff and space are lower.

The trend is known as cloud farming, and AI has given it another boost with numerous towns, like Virudhunagar, hosting firms working on AI.

So does Mr Kumar think he is missing out, by not being in a big city? Professionally, there is no real difference. Whether in small towns or metros, we work with the same global clients from the US and Europe, and the training and skills required are the same, says Mr Kumar.

Mr Kumar works for Desicrew. Founded in 2005, it was a pioneer in cloud farming. We realised that instead of forcing people to migrate to cities in search of jobs, we could bring jobs to where people already live, says Mannivannan J K, the chief executive of Desicrew.

Desicrew does all sorts of outsourced work including software testing for start-up firms, building datasets to train AI, and moderating content. At the moment, 30 to 40% of its work is AI related, but very soon, it will grow to 75 to 100%, says Mr J K. Much of that work is transcription - turning audio to text.

Around 70% of his workforce are women: For many, this is their first salaried job, and the impact on their families is transformative – from financial security to education for their children, says Mr J K.

Founded in 2008, NextWealth was also an early mover in cloud farming. Headquartered in Bangalore, it employs 5,000 staff in 11 offices in smaller towns across India.

NextWealth started with outsourced work but moved into artificial intelligence. The world's most advanced algorithms are being trained and validated in India's small towns, says Mythily Ramesh, co-founder of NextWealth, highlighting the importance of human-labelled data in AI model development.

Despite optimistic prospects, challenges remain, such as the perception of rural areas as underdeveloped and the need for reliable data security. However, the successes of firms in these regions show a promising future for AI in rural India.