At UNGA, Ravi Venkatesan Launches India-Based Research Action Policy Lab to Prove AI Can Create Opportunity for Workers

NEW YORK — As global leaders convene in New York for the United Nations General Assembly and as AI continues to reshape labor markets around the world, the India Headquartered Institute for Human Flourishing (IHF) launched today with an urgent mandate: ensure AI raises incomes, expands agency, and creates opportunity for communities around the world, especially those vulnerable to AI-driven labor disruption. IHF, founded by global business leader and entrepreneur Ravi Venkatesan and led by CEO Urvashi Aneja, will begin in India, testing what helps workers navigate and benefit from AI, and taking what works into policy and practice across the Global South. "India has the chance to show the world a different model — one in which AI becomes a tool for mass flourishing rather than mass displacement. But that will not happen by default," said Ravi Venkatesan, Founder, Institute for Human Flourishing. "It requires institutions that connect evidence, practice, and policy. That is why we have built IHF." Institutional choices—not the technology itself—will shape AI’s economic impacts. For India the opportunity is particularly significant - nearly 90% of the country's workforce is informal, and AI could augment farmers, artisans, and micro-enterprises at scale. At the same time entry-level Information Technology (IT) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) roles — the main pathway into the middle class in many countries — are thinning, while export-led growth via cheap labour is weakening as automation caps wages. The challenge is ensuring AI's benefits reach beyond large firms to workers and small enterprises across India. The binding constraint is diffusion, not capability — reorganising work, dislodging information gatekeepers, building institutions. Prosperity isn't automatic; IHF exists to help steer it. IHF will also create: A Livelihoods Lab that will run live, co-designed demonstrations of human-AI collaboration in real organizations with real workers, with every finding published as an open public good regardless of outcome. An AI and Jobs Observatory that will track worker experiences and develop a foundational Index of Human Flourishing that measures outcomes beyond income — capturing agency, dignity, capability, and economic security. A Policy and Narrative program that will translate findings into evidence-based advocacy and connect a Global South advisory network [across shared priorities]. "The question is no longer whether AI will transform work in the Global South — it already is. The question is whether that transformation raises incomes and expands agency for the majority, most of whom work in the informal economy," said Urvashi Aneja, CEO, Institute for Human Flourishing. "That outcome will be decided by institutional choices, and those choices need evidence. IHF exists to build that evidence in the field, with real workers and real enterprises, and to make sure it shapes both markets and policy." The Government of India's Expert Group on Human Flourishing has formally endorsed IHF's establishment. "India's approach to AI has been anchored in inclusion — technology as a public good that expands opportunity for all," said S. Krishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India. "Building rigorous evidence on how AI can strengthen livelihoods, particularly in the informal economy, complements the Government's efforts under the IndiaAI Mission. We welcome the Institute for Human Flourishing's contribution to this agenda." IHF's global launch event at The Rockefeller Foundation in New York featured a panel moderated by Andrew Sweet, Vice President of Innovation at The Rockefeller Foundation, with panelists Urvashi Aneja, Raffi Krikorian, Chief Technology Officer of Mozilla Foundation, and Manu Chopra, Co-Founder and CEO of Karya.