Aapti Institute

Aapti Institute is a Bengaluru-based public research institution working at the intersection of technology and society, with a focus on data governance, AI labour, and digital public infrastructure. Founded in 2019 by Dr. Sarayu Natarajan, with Astha Kapoor as co-founder and director, the institute describes its mission as building an equitable and just digital world where people are empowered to negotiate with technology. Its two principal arms — the Data Economy Lab and the Digital Public Lab — produce research, practical tools, and policy recommendations designed to transfer power over data systems from platforms and governments toward the communities that generate and depend on data.

Founding and structure

Dr. Sarayu Natarajan founded the institute in 2019, drawing on a background in management consulting (McKinsey and Company), venture investing, and academic research (PhD in Political Science, King's College London). Astha Kapoor co-founded the organisation and leads the Data Economy Lab, which focuses on new models of data sharing, stewardship, and participatory governance. The Digital Public Lab addresses digital inclusion and equity, examining how infrastructure design choices distribute power. The institute occupies a physical office in Bengaluru's Sivanchetti Gardens but operates at national scale, with projects spanning India and the broader Global South.

Data cooperatives

The Data Economy Lab is the organisation's most distinctive contribution to the make-AI-good movement. AAPTI works from the premise that the dominant data economy — in which individuals generate data that platforms aggregate and monetise — can be restructured through collective data governance institutions: data trusts, data cooperatives, and stewardship intermediaries that mediate data flows on behalf of their members rather than against their interests. This is a structural intervention in how training data and AI outputs are owned and governed, distinct from the data-sovereignty frame that centres indigenous or state control.

Practical work includes a multi-year engagement with Megha Mandli, a women farmers' cooperative under the SEWA Federation in Gujarat, to build a data layer inside an existing cooperative structure — an attempt to test whether a community that already governs its labour collectively can govern its data on the same terms. From that experience, AAPTI partnered with Data2X and Open Data Manchester to publish a practitioner's handbook (September 2024) on establishing data cooperatives, addressing the persistent gap between theoretical models and operational implementations. The handbook acknowledges that real-world successful data cooperatives remain rare and aims to bridge that gap with a step-by-step roadmap.

In parallel, AAPTI and Data2X launched Data Co-ops in Action in early 2024 — a network of support for gender data cooperatives in the Global South, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and Dalberg Catalyst through their Uncommon Collaborations programme. The first cohort selected organisations from Tanzania and Papua New Guinea, providing microgrants of $5,000–$10,000 and co-design workshops to help them build data layers. The initiative operates from the premise that women's data — on agriculture, health, and labour — is systematically underrepresented in training datasets, and that women's cooperatives already have the governance infrastructure to manage their data collectively if given the tools.

AI labour governance

The institute's AI labour work examines the conditions of the hidden workforce that trains, tests, and filters AI systems — data annotators, content moderators, and platform-based gig workers, predominantly in the Global South. AAPTI approaches this as a governance gap: the transnational outsourcing arrangements that connect a Silicon Valley model with a Bengaluru or Manila labeller pass accountability through multiple corporate layers, each of which can deny responsibility for the conditions of the work.

In collaboration with GIZ GmbH's Gig Economy Initiative, AAPTI has produced a series of reports on AI labour in the Global South. The third report in the series (March 2026), Fragmented Responsibility, argues that existing due-diligence frameworks — including the EU's Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and Germany's Supply Chain Act — fail remote, multi-jurisdictional AI supply chains because they were designed for physical goods moving through customs. The report advocates a value-chain framework that follows contractual accountability through outsourcing layers, rather than stopping at the first-tier vendor. Its policy recommendation is for tech companies to accept direct responsibility for the labour conditions of their outsourced workforces as a condition of operating in regulated markets.

Digital public infrastructure and broader positioning

The Digital Public Lab extends the institute's interests into the architecture of shared digital infrastructure. AAPTI has argued that data sharing should be treated as the third pillar of digital public infrastructure — alongside identity and payments systems — and that for data infrastructures to qualify as genuinely public, they must maximise inclusion, break data silos, and be governed in ways that prevent harm. A Gates Foundation-supported project is developing a principled framework for this form. The work connects AAPTI's cooperative and labour research to the larger question of who controls the AI training stack.

In 2026, AAPTI entered a partnership with AI Now Institute and The Maybe to produce Reframing Impact: AI Summit 2026 — a series of essays drawing together advocates, builders, and thinkers from around the world to challenge the dominant narrative of the India AI Impact Summit and articulate a people-centred alternative. The collaboration positions the institute as a Global South counterweight within the international AI governance conversation, distinct from both the Silicon Valley lab-led frame and the state-led development frame represented by the Indian government's IndiaAI mission.