Virudhunagar, a small town in southeastern India, is known for temples that have stood for centuries. Yet today, it hosts a new kind of innovation: training artificial intelligence systems that impact the world.
Tradition meets cutting-edge technology
Mohan Kumar spends his workdays teaching machines to understand and predict human behavior. “I work in AI annotation. I collect and label data to train models that recognize objects. Over time, they learn to make independent decisions,” he explains.
India has long led the world in outsourced IT services, with cities like Bangalore and Chennai as the main hubs. Recently, companies have moved operations to smaller towns, where skilled workers are abundant and costs are lower.
This shift, called cloud farming, has turned towns like Virudhunagar into new centres of AI activity.
Bringing high-tech jobs to small towns
Mohan Kumar says working outside a major city does not limit his career. “There’s no professional difference. We serve the same global clients and use the same skills and tools as city offices,” he says.
He works for Desicrew, founded in 2005, one of India’s first cloud farming pioneers. “We realised we could bring jobs to people instead of forcing migration,” says chief executive Mannivannan J. K. “Cities held most opportunities. We wanted to prove world-class work can happen anywhere.”
Desicrew handles software testing, content moderation, and AI dataset preparation. “Currently, 30 to 40% of our work involves AI,” Mannivannan says. “That will soon rise to 75 or 100%.”
Training AI to understand humans
Much of Desicrew’s AI work involves transcription—turning audio into text. “Machines understand text far better,” Mannivannan explains. “To make AI sound natural, it must learn how people speak across accents and dialects. Transcription builds that foundation.”
He insists rural offices can match urban tech centres. “People assume rural means outdated, but our centres have secure systems, reliable electricity, and fast internet. The only difference is geography.”
About 70% of Desicrew’s workforce are women. “For many, this is their first salaried job,” Mannivannan adds. “It transforms families, providing financial security and better opportunities for their children.”
Unlocking small-town talent
NextWealth, founded in 2008, follows a similar model. Based in Bangalore, it employs 5,000 people across 11 smaller towns.
“Sixty percent of India’s graduates come from small towns, but most IT jobs are in cities,” says co-founder Mythily Ramesh. “That leaves a huge pool of first-generation graduates untapped. Their parents—farmers, tailors, or shopkeepers—make sacrifices to fund education.”
NextWealth started with back-office work but shifted to AI five years ago. “Some of the world’s most advanced algorithms are trained and validated in India’s smaller towns,” Ramesh says.
Local talent with global impact
Nearly 70% of NextWealth’s business comes from the US. “Every AI model—from chatbots to facial recognition—depends on large volumes of human-labelled data,” Ramesh explains. “That is the backbone of cloud farming jobs.”
She expects rapid growth. “In three to five years, AI and generative AI could create nearly 100 million jobs. India’s small towns can lead this expansion.”
Ramesh believes India has a head start. “Countries like the Philippines may compete, but India’s scale and early adoption give it a five to seven-year advantage. We must act now to maintain it.”
Challenges remain
Technology advisor KS Viswanathan, formerly with India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies, calls cloud farming transformative. “Silicon Valley builds AI engines, but India’s small towns keep them running,” he says.
He believes rural India could become the world’s largest AI operations hub. “If growth continues, small-town India may replicate its IT success from two decades ago.”
Obstacles remain. “Internet speed and secure data centres are not always at metro standards,” Viswanathan warns. “Data protection is an ongoing challenge.”
Perception is another barrier. “Clients sometimes doubt small towns can meet global standards. Trust must be earned through consistent results,” he adds.
The people behind smarter machines
At NextWealth, Dhanalakshmi Vijay fine-tunes AI models daily. When a system mistakes a denim jacket for a navy shirt, she corrects it. “Each fix teaches the AI. It’s like giving it experience — it improves with every correction,” she says.
Her work impacts millions of users. “We train AI that makes online shopping faster and more accurate,” she says. “We help machines understand human behavior better.”
A digital future rooted in the countryside
Across India’s smaller towns, young professionals and first-generation graduates are quietly shaping global AI. From Virudhunagar to dozens of others, innovation thrives outside skyscrapers and city tech parks.
In the shadow of ancient temples, India’s countryside is quietly powering the future, where tradition and technology grow side by side.
