What Delivering Food Taught Me About India’s Gig Economy
Kasim Saiyyad worked at a food delivery service in India for two months as part of his PhD research at Cornell University
(Photo: Unemployed waiting in line to apply for a job in India. Courtesy: Creative Commons.)
August 22, 2025
By Kasim Saiyyad*
August 22, 2025
The notification chimed on my phone: “Order received – Rs. 20 ($0.23) for 3.2 km delivery.” I looked at the address, started my motorbike, and began what would become a two-month journey delivering online food orders, as one of India’s independent contractors, or gig workers. By the time I delivered that first order—a 20-minute hunt through narrow lanes to find a customer’s house in the dark—I had earned my first earnings as a gig worker. More importantly, I had begun to understand the vast gap between the gig economy’s promises and realities.
This was not planned research. In September 2024, while studying rural employment programs in Maharashtra state, I kept meeting young migrants who moonlighted as delivery workers. Their stories of flexible work and easy money seemed at odds with their precarious living conditions I observed.
As NITI Aayog, an Indian government agency, projected India’s gig workforce would more than double to reach 23.5 million workers by 2030, I realized that understanding this growth required more than interviews and surveys. It required working in a delivery job, including using a gig platform and experiencing first-hand how it uses algorithms.
Entering the Algorithm
Becoming a delivery worker in Nagpur, Maharashtra, proved deceptively simple. After downloading the app and providing basic details (phone number, bank information, and Aadhaar identity card), I came across my first expenses—Rs. 400 ($4.70) sign-up fees plus Rs. 2,000 ($23.50) for a branded delivery bag and t-shirt, deductible from future earnings. The platform, which can be accessed in several Indian languages, required payment before I had earned a single rupee.
What the platform did not require was equally telling. No driving license verification, no helmet confirmation, and no safety training for work involving constant road navigation. I was registering not as an employee but as an “independent contractor” using “aggregator services”—legal language that shielded the company from employment obligations while maintaining operational control.
The training videos covered app navigation thoroughly but offered little about worker rights, transparency about earnings or dispute resolution. I could skip entire sections—a design prioritizing quick onboarding over worker preparation. Within hours, I was approved to start deliveries, though insurance coverage for accidents would only activate after two successful orders.
Managed by Algorithms
I quickly realized that working for an online platform means surrendering to remote, digital micro-management in ways traditional employment rarely demands. The app does not just facilitate work—it monitors, evaluates, and controls every aspect of it. Location tracking runs continuously, monitoring speed, route efficiency, and idle time. Push notifications arrive constantly, pressuring workers to stay online during peak hours or nudging them to accept additional orders.
The incentive structure too reveals sophisticated behavioral control. Daily and weekly bonuses appear achievable but require completing lengthy shifts—often six to ten hours in length—and maintaining high acceptance and productivity rates, especially during peak lunch and dinner hours. Rejecting more than three orders during a shift triggers penalties, forcing workers to accept unprofitable deliveries. When I set my maximum delivery distance to four kilometers, the system still assigned me an eight-kilometer order I felt compelled to accept.
Workers cannot see customer locations before accepting orders, making informed decisions impossible. Such control extends beyond work hours. The platform’s internal marketplace encourages workers to spend earnings on company-branded merchandise, phone accessories, and investment products.
(Photo: unemployed waiting for work at a village market in India. Courtesy: Creative Commons.)
True Cost of Delivery
During my shifts, I met Vishal, a 34-year-old delivery worker who had moved to Nagpur from a small town in Vidarbha, three years earlier, seeking better employment opportunities. After struggling to find stable work for 18 months, he turned to food delivery. Our conversations, during waits at restaurants, helped me understand the economics of a gig job, which platforms seek to hide and is difficult for a gig worker to figure out.
Vishal’s monthly mobile expenses averaged Rs. 600 ($7.06). Six months earlier, he had to replace his smartphone, after the old one developed lag issues that cost him orders. The new Rs. 14,000 ($164.70) smart-phone, bought on an Equated Monthly Instalment plan, consumed Rs. 1,200 ($14.12) per month. “I carry a power bank that cost me Rs. 1,500 ($17.65),” he said, patting his delivery bag.
Then, there were tire punctures roughly once a month, costing Rs. 50 ($0.59) in repairs each time. Regular motorbike servicing, chain adjustments, brake repairs, and minor fixes averaged Rs. 800 ($9.41) monthly. With petrol at Rs. 103 ($1.21) per liter, Vishal’s monthly fuel bill reached Rs. 5,100 ($60). Also, when delivery deadlines grew tight, the temptation to cut corners increased. “I’ve paid Rs. 2,000 ($23.50) in traffic signal-jumping fines this year,” Vishal admitted. The platform extracted additional mandatory expenses, including for replacing soiled and worn-out branded delivery bags and t-shirts, every few months.
Vishal rarely received additional compensation. “There is no tip culture here in Nagpur like in other big cities,” he explained. “Customers just take their order and close the door.” Customers rarely use the tipping feature on the app since they assume the delivery fee, which is included in the fixed price, provides a good wage for the gig worker.
Overall, Vishal’s monthly expenses totaled Rs. 7,920 ($93.18). From his gross monthly earnings of Rs. 14,000 ($164.70), this left him Rs. 6,080 ($71.76) in income, or roughly Rs. 200 ($2.35) per day for a ten-hour shift. This income though does not account for health costs. After 18 months of delivery work, Vishal experienced persistent back pain from prolonged riding and poor bike ergonomics. “I can’t afford to take breaks or see a doctor regularly,” he said. The platform provided basic accident insurance but nothing for occupational health issues that develop gradually.
Encounters on the Street
My chats with customers, restaurant staff, and fellow workers revealed the tensions underlying platform capitalism’s facade of seamless service. Customers, tracking their orders in real time, often grew frustrated when deliveries were delayed due to traffic, or delays in restaurant preparations. The app’s promise of precision—deliveries in 30 minutes—created unrealistic expectations that workers tried to somehow manage. Conversations with delivery workers from other platforms revealed that they faced similar frustrations.
Restaurant experiences varied dramatically. Established outlets treated delivery workers professionally, maintaining separate pick-up counters, and providing wait-time estimates. However, the growing ecosystem of “ghost kitchens”—unmarked food operations within residential buildings—presented unique navigational and time-consuming challenges. These businesses, which are optimized for fulfilling app-based orders, often lacked proper signage or dedicated pick-up areas.
(Photo: Kasim Saiyyad)
Broader Economic Logic
According to a government report, there are currently about ten million gig workers in India, including about half of them in platform-based delivery jobs. While there are no formal education requirements for delivery work, the workers need to be literate and have some technical skills to use the apps. The gig workers I met had at least a high school education, with many having some college education.
The gig economy in India has expanded beyond delivery to include cleaning, household services, ride-hailing, caregiving, and skilled freelance roles like content creation, digital marketing, and tutoring. Some of these jobs, or at least their current scale of employment, are largely new. While there are a few young women working in delivery, for major platforms like Flipkart and Amazon, more women are found in beauty, home care, cleaning, and cooking services.
Vishal’s daily earning of roughly Rs. 200 ($2.35), as a delivery worker, is similar to what many rural laborers earn, ranging between Rs. 120 and Rs. 250 ($1.41 to $2.94). But it is less than the Rs. 312 ($3.67) paid under the rural employment guarantee scheme. Urban laborers in Nagpur earn between Rs. 200 and Rs. 400 ($2.35 to $4.71 per day), depending on their skills. So, though he migrated to a city, seeking better income opportunities, Vishal ends up earning a wage close to what he would earn in his small town. Yes, the cost of living in a town is lower than in a city. But, unskilled workers like Vishal have a tough time finding steady, year-round work in a town, like he does as a delivery worker in the city.
For Vishal and other delivery workers in Nagpur, primarily youths from the city and nearby small towns, the platform jobs are their sole source of income. They face the daily pressure of meeting rent, fuel, and household expenses, with uncertain earnings dictated by pricing, cost, and productivity algorithms.
Working during peak demand hours - lunch (12-2 PM) and dinner (7-10 PM) - offered the highest earnings potential, while daily and weekly bonuses required high acceptance and delivery rates. This made it nearly impossible for Vishal to hold a second job. The allure of flexible work schedules effectively trapped workers into full-time availability. Working part-time meant earning substantially less per hour due to missing out on both surge pricing during peak hours and meeting bonus thresholds.
In contrast, the young rural migrants, I spoke with, found gig work attractive as temporary employment that could fit around their primary agricultural work. They viewed platform work as one with low barriers to entry and the ability to earn supplementary income during agricultural off-seasons. The rural youth often relied on family support to purchase the smartphones and motorcycles essential for platform work—sometimes from the income earned through government employment schemes.
So, work that appears as flexible to someone with land and family support in a village becomes precarity for another dependent solely on the gig income in the city. Understanding this distinction is crucial to grasping why platform work's promises resonate differently across India's rural and urban workforce.
The demand for gig workers in India coincides with the need to create hundreds of millions of jobs and amidst distress in the agricultural economy. Widespread unemployment and underemployment offer platforms a large pool of readily available labor for independent contract work. Not surprising then that platforms have successfully created a workforce which assumes traditional employer expenses and responsibilities—equipment provision, risk management, and skill development—while discarding traditional worker protections around wages, working conditions, and job security.
Policy Measures
NITI Aayog’s optimistic projections assume platform job creation will address part of India’s unemployment challenges. However, my experience suggests such work, at least in the case of urban workers, often represents economic desperation rather than genuine choice. Overall, the absence of social protection, health benefits, or retirement security makes gig work a survival strategy rather than a sustainable career path for most participants.
India’s policy response to gig work reveals the tension between recognizing worker needs and maintaining the flexibility in wages, hours, and employment conditions that platforms seek. In July 2023, Rajasthan became the first state to pass comprehensive gig worker legislation, establishing a welfare board and mandating 1-2% transaction fees from platforms to fund social security. The law requires platforms to register workers and provide transparent data about earnings and commissions—information companies have historically guarded closely.
Recent developments suggest broader policy momentum. For instance, in the budget for 2025, the central government announced annual health insurance coverage of Rs. 500,000 ($5,882) for gig workers and their family through the PM-JAY scheme, with 10 million workers expected to benefit immediately. A related pilot program launched in September 2024 registered four major platforms—Urban Company, Zomato, Blinkit, and Uncle Delivery—on the e-Shram portal, preparing the infrastructure for a nationwide social security coverage.
However, implementation remains challenging. Most workers I met were unaware of the schemes, let alone that they need to apply to qualify for social security and health benefits. Additionally, the central government’s Code on Social Security, 2020, recognizes gig workers as a separate category but most states lack rules to implement the program. While inconsistent, regulations across states focus on social security, they avoid the core questions of whether gig workers should have collective bargaining rights, minimum wage protections, and the ability to challenge algorithmic-based management decisions.
Promise and Reality
Looking back over those two months, I delivered roughly 30 orders and earned approximately Rs. 1,200 ($14), an amount that barely covered fuel costs for my journeys. More significantly, I experienced how a platform transforms workers into algorithmic subjects, responsive to digital stimuli designed to maximize the operator’s profits rather than worker welfare. I also realized that the gig economy represents not worker independence but an acceleration of trends towards worker insecurity.
India needs more than the current patchwork of welfare measures. Essential reforms should include transparent algorithmic management, where workers understand how earnings are calculated and orders are assigned. Platforms should bear responsibility for equipment costs, health insurance, and accident coverage, rather than passing them on to workers. Most importantly, gig workers need meaningful representation in decisions affecting their livelihoods, whether through recognized unions or platform governance structures.
The Rs. 20 I earned for my first delivery represents more than a wage. It symbolizes the distance between the gig economy’s promises and its realities, between platform rhetoric about empowerment and a worker’s experience of navigating an increasingly precarious economic landscape.
*Kasim Saiyyad is a PhD candidate in applied economics and management at Cornell University, New York, and a Tata-Cornell Institute Scholar. His research focuses on agriculture, livelihood, and nutrition economics in low- and middle-income countries.
This is a condensed and modified version of story first published in India Forum; reprinted with permission. An earlier version was published as a blog on the Tata-Cornell Institute site.