India’s Institute for Human Flourishing launches to study how AI can raise incomes and expand worker control

# What launched Flourishing (IHF) — founded by Ravi Venkatesan and led by CEO Urvashi Aneja — announced its launch on September 23 during United Nations General Assembly high-level week in New York. The lab will begin in India and study how AI affects workers and small enterprises, then take lessons to other Global South contexts.

# Why India first

# What IHF will build and study

• Livelihoods Lab: field projects testing human-AI collaboration in real workplaces. Workers and organizations will help design the projects. IHF plans to publish every finding as an open public good.

• AI and Jobs Observatory: a tracking effort that monitors worker experiences across job types as AI changes work. The observatory will develop an Index of Human Flourishing that goes beyond income to measure agency, dignity, capability, and economic security.

Together these programs aim to generate practical interventions and evidence that can be used by workers, small businesses, and policymakers.

# Who is funding it The initiative is backed by the Rockefeller Foundation, Schmidt Philanthropies, and the Government of India. The intention is to connect evidence, real-world work, and policy to explore how AI can support broader economic opportunity.

# The practical questions IHF will address IHF is focused on operational questions that matter to workers and small firms: How does AI reach informal workers and microenterprises? Which forms of human-AI collaboration increase incomes? What organizational and information-sharing changes influence who benefits? How should institutions and policy shape distribution of gains? The Index of Human Flourishing is meant to create measurable outcomes that extend beyond wages to capture worker agency and economic security.

# What to expect next Initial research and pilots will take place in India with findings published openly. The observatory will track worker experiences across sectors. Results and policy recommendations will be aggregated by the Policy and Narrative program and shared with a Global South advisory network.

# Bottom line IHF is positioning itself as a research-to-policy lab that starts with India's complex labor market to test how AI can improve worker outcomes. Backed by major philanthropic and government partners, it will run field experiments, track worker-level changes, and push for policy informed by those results.