JanAI, an initiative of the Head Held High Foundation, has launched a community AI café in Karnataka’s HD Kote, aiming to bring AI to rural communities through local entrepreneurship and community participation. The initiative is designed to create a neighbourhood hub where citizens can learn, build and use AI to improve livelihoods and solve local problems.
The JanAI Café has been established within a women-run Millets Café operated by members of the Jenu Kuraba tribal community in partnership with the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement. JanAI says the model is intended to ensure that women play a leading role in AI adoption, while equipping rural youth with AI skills and entrepreneurial opportunities.
Alongside the launch, JanAI released the HD Kote Community Listening Inception Report, which it describes as one of India’s early grassroots AI-readiness studies. The report draws on surveys of more than 1,000 households and over 100 rural youth, documenting everyday challenges, aspirations, entrepreneurial ambitions and perceptions of AI.
The survey was conducted by more than 20 locally trained AI ambassadors, most of them girls, with the findings set to guide the development of AI solutions tailored to local needs.
According to JanAI, the café represents a shift from technology-led deployment to community-led AI development, where residents help shape AI tools rather than simply adopt them. The organisation says the initiative brings together community listening, trusted local leadership, AI adoption, entrepreneurship and measurable impact under one roof.
“The JanAI Café is much more than a place—it is a new model for how AI can reach every citizen. We believe that before AI can solve problems, it must first learn to listen,” Madan Padaki, Founder of JanAI, said in a statement.
He added that the initiative combines community listening, local leadership, AI adoption and entrepreneurship, with a vision of establishing thousands of similar cafés across India.
Padaki said locating the café inside a women-led tribal enterprise demonstrates that AI’s future “will not be written only in our technology parks and metropolitan cities; it will also be shaped by women, youth and communities in India’s villages.”
JanAI plans to establish more than 10,000 agentic AI cafés across tehsils and gram panchayats over the next three years. The statement says the cafés will serve as community infrastructure for AI adoption, entrepreneurship and inclusive economic growth by bringing together governments, civil society organisations and industry partners.
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