India Inc gung-ho on gig workforce

India Inc has seen more than 100% rise in gig workforce who are logging in for few hours to work as mystery auditors in retail and hospitality sector; joining the logistics and startup sector for supervisory roles or working in the telecom sector for 5G rollouts. 

Recruitment firms and gig platforms have upped their team strength and added verticals who will hire for gig workers according to specific industries. . 

“Gig economy will help organizations focus on their core propositions and any other non-core propositions that are repeatable in nature can get outsourced to gig platforms - from factory jobs to selling complicated finanical products,” said Vidyarthi Baddireddy, founder of PickMyWorks - a platform that connects e-commerce firms to gig workers. 

In 2022, PickMyWorks gig worker base grew from 50,000 to 5 lakhs and is expected to grow to 20 lakhs by the end of 2023. 

The push accentuated during the pandemic when workers who lost their jobs or later wanted to add to their income sources, picked up gig work of few hours. Their demand soared during the festive season when companies hired a record 400,000 gig and temporary workers to serve festival shopping. 

Though there is no strict delineation between gig and temp workers, gig work is used to refer to short-duration work, while temp workers are hired for several months at a stretch. Temp staffing is relatively more organized as well, and when hired via staffing firms, workers have access to benefits and insurance. 

“The gig workforce registered on TaskMo was about 2.5 lakh in 2021 and now it is 5 lakh and we expect the number to increase by 40% in the coming year. Demand for mystery audits in retail and hospitality to work in logistics and startups have led to this growth,” said Guruprasad Srinivasan, group chief executive at recruitment firm Quess Corp. TaskMo is a gig marketplace backed by recruitment firm Quess Corp. 

Another reason for the rise in gig workers is because the nature of jobs has evolved from just logistics or delivery partner to more skilled workers working in software development, IT projects. 

Staffing firm TeamLease Services has separate teams focusing on needs for gig workforce and working with clients on attrition , benefits and upskilling programs. “Entry and supervisory roles in startups are outsourced to gig workers. The telecom sector with 5G rollouts will lead to another spurt in demand for gig manpower,” said Sumit Sabharwal CEO, TeamLease HRtech Ltd. 

The staffing firm said there are 7.7 million workers engaged in the gig economy and expected to expand 23.5 million by 2029-30. 47% of the gig work is in medium skilled, 22% high skilled and 31% are in low skilled jobs. A gig worker normally makes 18 to 25 k per month depending location, region, industry 

“From April 2020 to September 2022, IT firms have hired over 1,20,000 people,” said Sabharwal. Infosys is the first amongst of IT service companies to accept the need of a gig workforce and is ready to let them work for external jobs and projects. 

The push to retain gig workers has increased business of KarmaLife, which provides financial liquidity to blue collared gig manpower. “90% of our clients employ gig workforce and there has been a 40x uptick in early salary disbursements,” said Rohit Rathi, co-founder of KarmaLife.