Human Archive, a Silicon Valley-based startup, has raised $8.2 million in seed funding to pursue an unconventional strategy: using workers from India's gig economy to collect first-person video data that could help train robots to perform physical tasks. The round was led by Wing Venture Capital and NVP Capital, with participation from Y Combinator and angel investors from companies including OpenAI, Nvidia, Google, Mercor, and Meta. The company has deployed more than 1,000 camera-equipped headsets with workers across multiple cities in India, capturing video of everyday tasks like food delivery, household repairs, and hotel services. The startup was founded by four graduate students: Samay Maini, Rushil Agarwal, Shloke Patel, and Raj Patel, who serves as CEO. Maini and Agarwal attended UC Berkeley, while the Patel cousins are Stanford alumni. All four bring research experience in robotics, hardware engineering, and tactile data collection. Human Archive's core thesis is that India's booming gig economy—fueled by companies like Zomato, Swiggy, and Urban Company—provides a vast, scalable workforce already performing physical labor that could teach robots how to navigate real-world environments. Human Archive is currently working with unnamed partners in the home services, hospitality, and restaurant sectors, but the company revealed it faced rejections from several major Indian platforms, including Urban Company and Pronto. Last weekend, Indian tech outlet Entrackr reported that Pronto is actively seeking its own partnerships to collect worker data for robotics training, suggesting the market opportunity is drawing competing interest. The timing of Human Archive's funding announcement suggests urgency in establishing partnerships before similar initiatives proliferate.