India has emerged as the 5th largest country for hiring gig-workers after the US, China, Brazil, and Japan. India has faced a major job crisis post-COVID pandemic, there is a rise in the need for supplemental income due to high unemployment amongst the urban youth and eventually, people shifted to the latest trend which is the gig economy. Benefits of the gig economy like flexibility in work, efficiency, additional income to impoverished populations, improvement in productivity by reducing idle and unproductive time new business models; the growing demand for on-demand taskers, etc are being counted and listed.
As India is moving toward becoming a $5 trillion economy by 2025, the gig economy will be
a significant building block in achieving the above goalpost, bridging the income and
unemployment gap. In March 2021, Boston Consultancy Group (BCG) published a study, Unlocking the Potential of the Gig Economy in India, which said the Indian gig economy has the potential to serve up to 90 million jobs in the non-farm sectors of India (which is around 30%) with the potential to add up to 1.25% to India’s GDP through efficiency and productivity gains alone.
Also, a recent report released by Taskmo has shown that “The participation of youth in the
gig economy has increased 8-fold between 2019 and 2022.” Start-ups to some of the celebrated unicorns like Byju’s, unacademy, Flipkart, and Amazon have emerged as significant drivers of the gig economy in India. Their success shows that the gig economy really works and fits the future of work. They hire gig workers in both skilled and unskilled jobs to reduce costs.
Start-ups are also one of the largest suppliers of gig workers operating in over 100 cities. Gig workers also fit in the constantly changing market demand which is comparatively tough with permanent workers. Gig workers are more cost-effective for businesses and employers are benefiting from a wider range of applicant pools to choose from. As per an Aon survey Decoding the Gig Economy, 49% of the 145 companies have already employed gig workers, and 65% plan to increase this number over the next 2–5 years. Hence, there is a vast potential for job seekers in blue, white, and grey-collar jobs.
Multinational companies benefited from gig workers both before and after the pandemic and eventually, this trend is being followed by fortune 500 startups. According to the
government agency India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), 75% of these companies have
around 10% gig workers, and the number is expected to rise significantly, particularly in the
FMCG-Pharma, technology, services, manufacturing and banking, financial services, and
insurance (BFSI) sectors. The edTech sector is already riding on the gig revolution and
employs more than 90,000 gig workers. Companies are increasingly looking for gig workers
in software development, marketing and sales, IT support, HR operations, customer support, etc.
Major reasons why companies prefer to hire Gig Workers are because Vetting candidates is
time-consuming. All that checking, screening, and vetting, consumes a lot of time, energy, and money, whereas with the help of the gig economy you can directly hire workers according to your task and time and you can pay once your work is done and you are totally satisfied with the work. Because working with on-demand workers means not too little onboarding, there’s money to be saved! Also using gig workers can reduce overhead costs for business owners.
There are a number of reasons that both workers and companies are inclined towards gig
work rather than traditional permanent work. The workers seem to prefer gig jobs over full-
time employment due to its flexibility and independence. It has created better opportunities
for finding more work across the globe and made work more adaptable to the changing
needs and demands for flexible lifestyles. With Gig, taskers can make lifestyle choices that a
conventional job would not allow. They can choose when and where to work and at the
same time determine how much they will charge for their services.
The gig economy has disrupted how we work, who we work with, and where we work from
forever. Now millennials and Gen Z want to be in control of their work-life, demanding flexibility and balance in their jobs. This is the reason gigs are skyrocketing. According to reports, there are 3.2 million people who regularly work in the Gig economy, and that number is expected to reach 7.6 million in the coming five years.
In the report, India’s booming Platform and Gig economy the government think-tank Niti Aayog estimated that workers engaged in the gig economy will grow from 77 lakhs in 2020-21 to 2.35 crore in 2029-30. India’s gig economy is estimated to show three-fold growth in the next four years and produce over 90 million gig workers by the year 2031 . The perks/benefits that attract employees to gig work are the freedom, flexibility, and autonomy that gig work offers. More employees are choosing gig working as a career option, from delivery executives to freelance consultants. And more and more companies are benefiting from having a flexible workforce; they are spending less money on training or recruitment.
Due to these trends Gig work is here to stay and will contribute to India’s economy.