With the high-end technology available to us, the work environment has also changed. The economy is now flooded with new talked-up jobs that connect people in need of work to the companies providing work, all through technology. This culture of app economy has destroyed several stable industries in the West and has turned diligent workers into freelancers overnight, marking an end to the era of labour unions and work benefits. It is also expected that this gig economy will turn the future of work environment upside down with workers being transformed into independent contractors rather than employees.
Talking about this culture of the gig economy, Ajit Ghose, an economist, says, “The gig economy is just another way of saying casual labour. In the West, where they have been used to regular jobs, it means something. In India though, formal work is only for a few and 35% of the workforce has always been in casual labour.”
The kind of work culture is more prevalent in the cities where everything from getting your food delivered to finding a yoga instructor, is done by the apps. Vidhya Soundararajan, professor at IIM- Bangalore, said, “It’s hard enough to get a measure of the informal economy. There are no reliable numbers for platform-based jobs, even in the US.” The U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics revealed that only 10% of the total workforce of the country is in a non-tradition workspace.

For instance, Urban Clap at present has a workforce of around 25,000 professionals and aims to create one million jobs in the next five years in different areas

On confronting Niti Aayog about the employment data of the platform-based work, the officials said that Ola and Uber have created more than two million jobs in the country. But, when a digital platform, BetterPlace calculated the same, they marked the statistics of employment at 1.4 million including Zomato, Uber, Ola and other such platform-based work applications. “In a labour force of nearly 500 million, several thousand jobs, or even one or two million, are not statistically significant yet,” adds Ghosh.

For instance, Urban Clap at present has a workforce of around 25,000 professionals and aims to create one million jobs in the next five years in different areas like home repair and beauty and wellness.
In the beauty sector, the bulk of the money is taken by the middlemen without doing any work. Talking about the issue, Himanshu Arora, Vice President of Urban Clap says, “A beautician may do Rs 1 or Rs 1.5 lakh worth of work, but most of it goes to the salon as maintenance or profits. At Urban Clap, we flip the equation, we take 20% and the rest goes to the professional.”

Urban Clap initially started out as an aggregator which only connected professionals and customers, but now, realising the value of the work and consistency, the company is moving towards building a more stable relationship with its workers. They also train professionals to standardise their operations. At a time, a class of 20 women are schooled at the beauty training session where they are taught politeness, dealing with sticky situations and doing the right thing when there is a conflict with the client.

Lacking a formal workplace or a proper office where customers can address their grievances, companies like Urban Clap manage clients only through their apps or call centre. Alongside Urban Clap, there are other players in the market as well like Housejoy, Mr. Right and Joboy who are providing work to the casual labour and changing the face of traditional workspace.