Why do India’s gig workers love a job they’re desperate to leave?

Every single day, 12 million people in India wake up and log into an app. These are the people that deliver your food, your groceries, your packages and to make all of that possible, they have to also own the bike, pay for the fuel, absorb pretty much every cost and every risk while the platforms that dispatch them have managed to build billion dollar businesses. I'm sure you guessed by now that I am talking about India's gig economy. Now don't get me wrong, this is probably the most incredible story of this decade. But as people who use these apps, we've all at some point had a hunch that something about this isn't really adding up. Of course we tend to overlook that hunch in the name of convenience. But a Bangalore based consulting firm called UK & Co actually went out and did the work. They spoke to a thousand three 55 gig workers from across Karnataka. These are people registered on Swiggy, Zomato, Blinket, Uber, a dozen other platforms. And based on those conversations, they released a brilliant report in February titled India's gig economy, The Promise and the Paradox. I'm particularly excited for you to listen to this episode because it throws up insights into the life and pressures of gig workers in India that we don't often see. So in this episode, I'm joined of course by Praveen, my wonderful co-host. And we are joined by SIG by the co-founder and managing partner, VUK & Co, which is the firm behind this report. We're going to go through this report together. We're going to look at the data. We're going to try and understand what it means. And in the process, we're going to try to answer a question that nobody really has a keen answer to. What breaks first if things continue this way? What does anything break at all? [Music] Sit by. Welcome to 2 by 2. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It's really a pleasure. I love before we answer that question. We're all going to take turns and answer that question before we kind of unpack the conversation. But I'd love to know how this report kind of came into being. I'm sure there is an interesting backstory there. Tell us a little bit about it. Yeah. Firstly, thanks for having me over here. And I'd like to actually congratulate my co-workers who kind of put this together. Arya, Nileesh, Rachana and Waibervi who spent our kind of putting this together. With that said, the hunch that you have was the same hunch that we had. And this kind of started with our founder kind of traveling one day to the airport and then having to see a small accident that involved one of the quick commerce guys. And then he was like, who's caring for them at this point in time? Because he was certain in his mind that he had to make a delivery. And as a result, something broke in the sense that it's a traffic violation or something happened for the sake of this. And he said, why don't we investigate what is happening with these guys? Every time we are having a conversation with these people in the cabs, they're unhappy, but yet they're doing the same thing. There is obviously some kind of a strong draw to the gig economy or the gig work. So we said, let's investigate this further. And that's really the bedrock of the reason why we thought we'll put a team together and let's see what these guys have to say. But the question that you've kind of posed over there, what's going to break? I don't think we should see it in that lens at all. Because what these companies have done is they've changed India also forever. They contribute to more than 1.5% in the GDP. Because of their presence and whether you like it or not, 10 minute delivery is here to stay. And they have revolutionized supply chains. They've made things available faster. It has not just helped them, but has also helped the local Kiranagai's in terms of their supply chains. So a lot of innovation has happened because of the available, because of all these guys, whether it is from a taxi point of view or whether it is your delivery guy. So I don't want to take anything away from any party over here. I think quick commerce and the right-hailing apps have all revolutionized India in a very nice way. It's just that there are some, there are as with anything that starts out fresh, there are some gaps that need to be addressed. And I think this report only just points out that it's a huge promise with what quick commerce and the other guys are doing. And there are some gaps, and which is what we should try and fix at some point or the other. So. And we also have to point out this report is largely focused on Karnataka. Yes, yes, yes. I mean, most of our work is also focused in the south India. We don't want to step far from our backyard. If we can get it right over here, then we can be a good thing for the whole nation to follow. That is our intent as an organization in general. So we thought we'd just focus on the people over here. We had about 1,300 respondents on this. More than 800 of them were from Bangalore because this Bangalore is the epicenter of pretty much every startup. And then there were a few in the tier two cities that we could manage to grab some respondents from. I'll just say a couple of things. Number one, like, I know you've said all the right things. It's done. But I will just say that a couple of things. I think it's important to talk about what is this report? We're talking about this report in the abstract a little bit. So let's just say what this is. So it's a report about India's gig economy. And what you've done said from on behalf of, of course, you can go is you have gone. You have interviewed as you said, 1,300,000, 1,353 people, primarily, I mean, all in Connecticut, primarily in Bangalore. And these are people who are gig workers across companies. And some of these companies are, say, quick commerce companies, like, say, blink it, steam, it includes food tech companies, like, Zomato, Swiggy. And here is the entire list of platforms that are covered. Amazon, Flipkart, Porter, Misho, Uber, Ola, Rapido, Nama Yadry, Swiggy, Zomato, Eat Club, Blinkit, Instamat, BigBasket, Zepto and GeoMat. So you haven't left anybody. You've gone after everyone. Yes, yes. All right. So I'll give you a few things for that. And this is a period where you did it between, say, October and December 2025. So it's a little bit maybe like three months, four months back. And what you've done is you've spoken to all of these people and at least we'll get into that. But the report is about questions like, it could be questions like, say, you know, how many platforms do you use, right? What is your working hours like? Some of them are very interesting. Some of them are questions like, do you feel fatigued? Have you felt dehydrated? Have you felt, have you seen health issues? And so on and so forth. And so on. So I'm going to give you a few things. I'm going to give you a few things. facturing setup. You would want to ask the same kind of questions to these people because at the end of the day, there's no difference between the two. Okay. So, I mean, the difference is that in terms of factory workers, you do give health care and the amount of the reason why we ask this question is like, if a factory employee is feeling dizzy, if he's working long hours, you would make changes to your system to make sure that you're compensating for that. There's always lunch offered. There are breaks. There is sufficient, you know, there's a provision for staff welfare. Usually in family businesses, there's even some money given for their children's education. There's a whole bunch of soft incentives that are given to these factory workers. So, why not ask the same questions? Are they getting this over here and the factory work and all the factory workers act and other things came about because of this only that people should not take advantage of a situation where somebody is in dire need of money, right? There should be some kind of a standard, even the minimum wage policy which just recently got increased for factory workers. The intent is the same that everybody should have some kind of a good income. There should be upward mobility of some kind and they should have a good life, not like a great life, but definitely a good life if they're working somewhere. So, if you take those principles and apply it to this industry, in which case these people technically become there, the bottom of the pyramid, then there have to be those provisions for these case as well. That's the lens through which we looked at it and that's where these questions actually came. Another set of questions that you had and answers that you had was because also the second argument that comes from people when you basically say, "Oh my God, we should do something, we should reform, get work, the second argument usually comes is that, look, this is anyway supposed to be a temporary thing. These are people who essentially the word gig itself implies that it is temporary, implies that it's a stepping stone towards doing other things." So they just do this on a few hours basis or a part time basis so they don't necessarily, we are not obligated to give them the rights and all the privileges and the benefit that you would give full-time employees, which of course is also something that this report sort of like pushes out and explores. But I just want to go back to something that you said, which is when I was making this little speech at one point in time, I said unskilled and I said it quote unquote. And I saw the reaction on your face, you were like, "No, no, no, wait, wait, I have to object to that." So please object, tell us. See, there is almost 25% of them are actually skilled. They do have degrees and maybe some - one kind of degrees. - Usually it will be graduate degrees, very few of them have some kind of a master's degree. But in fact, I have a small anecdote over here. I have somebody working in my office now who was earlier working with Rapido and now is doing high-end ETL transformations for one of the AI things that we are trying to push out in the small business. So I'm just saying that this person was actually working in Rapido before this. So there have been some families. - And I was sorry, and he was working as a writer. - As a writer, yeah. - So what I'm trying to say is that if somebody of that stature in that background is working as a writer and now is doing let's say high-end ETL transformations, then you're thinking there must be some family issue or some reason why they are sort of pushing this, either the family is in debt, there is some other issue. So it kind of pushes the boundary in terms of why somebody takes up this job. But yes, a large percentage of them are here. It's also also means that there aren't too many opportunities in the formal economy for graduated kind of underscores. It points out to a larger issue actually that we are not, we do not have enough jobs in the market for graduates at this point in time, which is a more scary thing actually according to me. - And that is even before we talk about what AI can do. - Yeah, that is as of December 2025. And five months down the line, a lot of things have changed. But it is a little scary. - It's very scary. It's actually, I think I'll just, from my standpoint, what I would want to know is that, okay, could you like broadly summarize, suppose I asked you, you spoke into these people, suppose I met you somewhere, let's say I met you at a party, even though two by two is like a party. And I asked you, what's the thing from this report that you would like to, you would like listeners to know? Suppose I asked you, what are the main things that surprising, interesting, counter-intuitive that you found out from this report? And the reason I asked this question is because every single person who is listening to this podcast has interacts with these people. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Every day. - Correct, right? - I mean, for me, I'll tell you what, a personal change, okay, before the take away that I think, I'd let's say, one line take away that if you want to take from this. - Sure. - For me, the personal thing is I started to tip more. - Okay. - Because what you realize is that they don't make enough. Convenience comes at a cost. And unfortunately, the companies that are on this are not bearing that cost. They're bearing a part of it. But it's on the people who are actually using these apps. Now, there is an option to tip. A lot of these, I think our apps are being fair and the tips are actually given to the writers themselves. So I think we should tip more. As a country, only we should tip more. But in this particular case, we should tip whatever, 30 or 40 or 50, whatever is the value of your product. I think personally, after seeing this report, that is my bit, my personal change, okay. And I think that is my request to everybody who's using this, right? So you're technically helping that person directly. That is one. But in terms of a one line takeaway, right? - It doesn't have to be one line. - No, but I'm saying the biggest takeaway, right? - Right. - Let's say, so if we are, if gig economy is the way to go for us, and it looks like it's going to be the way, right? None of these companies are going away. And we have gotten used to this convenience, right? So if, as a, if you're going to absorb millions of Indians and we fail to sort of help build their savings, their health security, or some kind of upward mobility, then we risk converting our demographic dividend into something that is very economically fragile. Because you have people from the ages of 18 to 25 working here at the prime years of their lives, when usually we would be spending learning, upskilling, doing something. But they're going to do this. You are going to make them very fragile once they cross say 25, 28, 29. It also has a larger impact in family life. I don't know how many of these guys may want to make it married because somebody will say he's just a delivery boy. There is a social stigma associated with the, with the role that you are performing over here. As a result, you could have depleting fertility ratios. As a result, we become an aging op. I mean, there are large scale implications of this. But what I'm trying to say is that we need to help provide them with the, with the solid, what I would say, structure by which this whole thing can be managed. That's my big takeaway. Fair. I'll get into specifics of this report. And I'm just going to tell out, read out the five or six things that stand out to me. First, these workers in Karnataka, out of the people that who you spoke to and serve it, they are working near full-time hours, which means that 81% of the people you spoke to, they work nine plus hours every day, 74% of them work all seven days of the week. So this is not a side hustle, right? It's not a gig. It's not a gig. Okay, so that's the first thing we should start with. 84% of the people you spoke to depend on gig work as their primary income, which also demolishes another thing, which obviously so it's not just in terms of time, it's also in terms of income source. That's the first thing. Second, 57% of them on close to 20,000 to 35,000 a month, which sounds okay as we see at the beginning. But once you account for the big expenses, which are fuel, vehicle EMI's and maintenance, it starts to get really, really, you know, precarious. 52% of the people you spoke to cannot meet their monthly expenses. 52% also have zero savings and 42% are in debt. So and it's also not just a question of earning, because just because you earn more doesn't mean you're not in debt. Correct. In fact, it's the, it seems like it's a reverse. It's the reverse. Right? Yeah. We'll come into this. Third, 72% of the people who you spoke to are between the ages of 18 to 32. We spoke, you spoke just now about the demographic window. This is exactly that. And so they are spending that demographic window without any savings, without any health cover, there's no career progression, etc. And you have, basically in your report also, you made it very clear about the demographic dividend, which we'll come to. 99.26% have not used Kanataka's gig worker insurance scheme. We'll come into that. Then the irony is that despite all of this, only 6% want to continue gig work in the long term. 29% want to crack competitive exams. 27% want to go back to farming. And This is essentially this middle zone and all of these people seem to be in. Yes. No, there's not doubt about that, right? And I almost think of this as some of my previous job, once you keep doing it, you're like, "No, no, I'm not going to stay here for long." But you end up staying there for a long time. So I would say that there is a little bit of a bias in that answer that they may not stay there for long. Because there is no other opportunity, you tend to stay there. And yeah, exactly. In fact, I was not talking about whether they stay there for long or not. It's not like people who are there are looking at it as, "Oh, this is, I want to stay here." Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm not even getting into. And it's perhaps that I think is also a little bit of the advertisement for this role, right? It also comes as, you know, do it for a short time. You at least make money right now. You don't need to worry about it, right? So I'm sure some friend will say, "Hey, why don't you just do this for one month?" Right? That's because the network is like that. They're going to just say, "Why don't you just do this for a month while you're sitting around, just deliver, you'll make some 2000 to P3000 to P3000 to P3000." Something will make. And it just sort of that cycle kind of goes on day by day, day by day, and day by day. So every time you think that, "No, no, no, I'm not going to do this for long." You know, I have a really cool dashboard over here, which I can share with you post this. Where, you know, it speaks about. You spoke about AI, right? So, yeah, I help you kind of build this. What AI did you use to build? This is actually a complexity computer. Okay. And I set up a niche. Nice. You're the first person I've met who's using a complexity computer. Although they seem to have gotten some kind of an issue, but yeah, please kind of. No, so, I mean, the intent was that I set up an agent to kind of figure out what each of these companies are doing and give it a kind of a score on what they've done for their developers. And it compared about five, six of them. And there's some very interesting ones in terms of how they have taken insurance, safety, like government, what you spoke about, can they. Because right now, the initiative is on the worker to sign up on these portals. So, Zomato is kind of pushing it from their side. It's kind of mandatory to kind of get it done. So, because they have all the data anyway. So, might as well push them. And then in terms of transparency, dispute resolutions. So, there's some fairly cool things that they've done from each company. But. I missed your one. My question is that when. No, no, no, no, once I was like. Finish this thing. Who's the ranking? Tell us about the ranking. No, so, the ranking is that I have Zomato at 7600. Okay. So, he is at 6600. Okay. Blink it, which is also their same one, but 7300. Right. Zepto, unfortunately, is at 4400. Okay. And Rapito is at 6300. Interesting. So, I can share this link with you at it. Yeah, sure. No, no, the reason why I brought that up is also because there is a very similar thing that has been done by this organization called Fair Work. Okay. Right. So, what Fair Work does is they basically do this thing where exactly what you said, they go and rank these platforms based on a bunch of parameters. Correct. It could be things like, you know, some of the stuff is what you have, which is like, do they provide insurance? Do they have like fair fairness with respect to transparency? A bunch of these things. I don't remember them off the top of my head. But I can like share that. And I've written about this as well. And I'm just going to read out the 2024 scores. Okay. Out of 10. And the 2024 scores out of 10 are a big basket, six out of 10, swiggy, six out of 10, urban company, six out of 10, zomato, six out of 10, blue smart, five out of 10. You can tell this at 2024 report. Okay. Zepto, four out of 10, Amazon Flex. Interesting. Two out of 10, a flip card, one out of 10, Ola, Porter and Obert don't have, it just blank, blank. So maybe they did not participate. But I do remember that one of the things that happened with this was, I think in 2021 or 2020 or something, they basically did this very similar kind of ranking. And zomato was somewhere at the bottom. Right. And I, if I know very clearly that the Pinder Goel at that time, who was a CEO of zomato, put out this tweet saying that, okay, we understand they did this. We take it in the chin and we will do whatever we can to fix it. And to the credit from 2020, if you go back and look at this, I'm looking at the ratings over the last few years, 2020 zomato was at one on 10, they were right at the bottom. From that point on, they have, they seem to have done some work there. No, really good work. Just about them that we're talking about. But you know, it cannot be just platform specific. That's the sad part about this, right? It's like, these, none of these guys are specific to zomato or specific to. Sure. So I think it needs to have some kind of a aggregate act that helps everybody across these platforms with this. It shouldn't be specific to a particular company. But why that 99% do things it like when you're having conversations with workers, why is it that 99% of them haven't touched that insurance scheme, right? Like what is the, there is some mismatch there. I'm trying to understand. The problem is not aware of it. Is it just that? Yeah, it's just complete awareness. There's nothing else. I mean, I'll give you a small energy. Yeah. Okay. I have a driver. I have bought him insurance. Okay, because there'll be some issue as a child. But when he goes to a hospital, he doesn't know that he has insurance. Even though I've given him a card and I've given him everything that, okay, if you go to a hospital at any point, make sure that you call this number and then go. But every time he comes to me and says, sorry, the bill cuts. I said, yeah, okay, insurance, okay, Lani, you won't do just doesn't do. So it's just that I feel that this whole insurance play is good for people with sufficient knowledge and backing. And a general process of how it works, right? You go there, you do the cashless system, you have to give this number, this is the card. I feel that awareness does not exist with this class of people in general. So even if they have this insurance, which I think the companies are putting for whatever reason, when they do go to the, to the, to the health center for any issue that they might have, it will still be a cash-based process. They will not even know that they have a card that they need to pull out, they need to show. They need, there is, they won't know this at all. So it's not just the question of provision of insurance. It's also the awareness of how to use this in the end. What works? What is the process? How do you file a claim? So it's, I would say that there are many ifs and buts in that statement, right? Ninety-nine percent, even if I give to all hundred percent, it will still be a problem. Which is what the companies are doing, right? They're saying, okay, I've got in, I'll give you insurance, no problem. But are you going to use it unlikely? You don't know, you just don't know how to use it. So what I lose, I think for the next like 30, 40 years, let's just go a little deeper into this report because that's really the heart of what we're discussing. And I think while we talk about that, we will also understand a little bit more. First, I just want to talk about who these people are. And that's really the report where it begins, right? Where you basically talk about the social demographic profile. I'm just going to read out some headline stuff and said you should probably like give us some more color into it, right? First, 88 percent of the people that you spoke to are from Karnataka. And that means that they have, and also there is a migration aspect to it, which is 16 percent of the gig workers have migrated to Bengaluru from other states. Yeah. With states. Usually it will be Tamil Nadu border state border areas in other position. Interesting. So it's not from North Indian, necessarily. Not necessarily. But also, is there a migration towards Bengaluru as well from people outside Bengaluru? So let's say people who are from other parts of Karnataka. Yeah, Bangalore is an epicenter in general. If you look at it even from a manufacturing standpoint or an IT standpoint, Bangalore has always been the hub for a lot of people to come and, you know, there's an upward mobility associated with Bangalore. So even in this space, I'm pretty sure the numbers, whatever we have over there, will be very significant. It will be the same across all these other areas as well. Correct. You will see people coming here for work. Yeah. And you will see that even 35, 40,000, if you are coming from, let's say even a TL2, TL3 town, there's a lot of money. Of course. If you're in their mind, of course. So you will see that. In fact, of all the cities that you have served, Bangalore, I mean, unsurprisingly, has the highest share of gig workers from whom whose percentage are non-natives. In fact, it's a majority. You say that majority of them are non-natives. That's 54% of the people who are working in the gig economy over here in Bangalore are non-native to Bangalore. Which is true. Right. I mean, you see that across everywhere. It's not just limited to, I would say this. Of course. I would say even if you go to the restaurant economy, you will see a lot of percentage of them are not from here. So I would say a large working class of people in the city today are not from here. And primarily, if you even broke it by categories, like say bike taxis, QCOM, food delivery, and the maximum share of non-native people, the sector in which they work are cab drivers. Yeah. Right. Which also seems to connect because it's like if you have come in here, rather, you mean, you probably have some kind of connection, something to get a car, maybe on an EMI. Yeah, yeah. And I think this, I mean, if you remember the earlier days of Uber, right? Right. You, I don't know if you remember a billboard that says, or 90,000 rupees. Yeah. Was there right by the airport? I remember. Right. I'm sure a lot of people who are working in IT will like say the driver is early 90,000 rupees, right? So there is a, and at that time, you would have noticed a lot of people bought new cars. Because at that price, it makes sense. It makes sense. And it makes sense. also for them if you are going to make 90 grand a month, it's okay to pay 20,000 rupees AMI for a car and continue and you'd make more money than you would probably think of. So I think the draw was very strong when they came in and over time it has obviously degraded and you will see the maintenance of the cars also have gone down now the quality of the interiors are the drivers are pretty much earlier this to where a very nice maybe white shirt now you won't find them that appealing so a lot of things have changed for and for somebody coming from outside just again it's a friend's loop right you will have one person doing it it's a herd mentality you will have one person doing it from that from that community or at your two town yeah you will he will spread back I am making a lot of money here doing this yeah somebody else will come they'll follow the same route and then that's and as then when the years go by you realize those incentives drive up fairly quickly when the company needs to make its profits and as a result everything gets gets harder and harder and now you have this coalition of drivers who essentially have 15 or 16 cabs and they will give you their fleets and they will have they'll give you their number and they'll say don't bother booking on this correct call me if you have to go to the airport right so I mean it's just the way it is going to be man yeah I don't want to finish this which is I think the other interesting part that I saw is you primarily I mean unsurprisingly the people who spoke to were male 99.4% of the people who spoke to a female were male and 0.6% were women I mean this is just me anecdotely speaking in Bengaluru I don't know what you Rahel I feel like the women whom I've seen in this are the ones who are almost always in Nama Yatri yeah right auto drivers in Nama Yatri occasionally I get a woman who uses an electric auto yeah and I always talk to them and it's always a very interesting and enlighten I also think that percentage will change in the next couple years also with how popular instant help is getting with snabbet and prawn tour all of that majority of there and I mean those are only getting more in my poplar I feel like that percentage is likely to increase I mean it's predominantly male some of the locations that we've gone to where you where you have either a large hotel or a dark store you will find large percentage of male population or very few women in fact even I have I mean anecdotely anecdotely I've not seen that many women even come in delivers so I think very rarely I've had someone do it for quick commerce or sometimes we give for me very rarely it just happened I have seen it but very rarely it's very rare do you have anything on the any of the women that you spoke to do you have any anecdotes anything that stands out I think that stands out out of the ordinary I mean they're also young in there so they're they've gone through life phases yet so they're probably trying this also for some time again hardship at home will probably be the primary driver but yeah nothing out of the ordinary but I mean I do echo rail that I would love to whenever you I'm sure you'll do another version of the report I don't know when you'll do it but at that point in time the instant help especially yeah absolutely they are going to be the people whom I think because I think that dimension to this report is going to be very interesting because they're graduating beyond just delivery now yeah as soon as you get into services I feel like that you're a lot more women getting absolutely and once you enter someone's homes yeah and it's I guess then it's another set of there'll be a very interesting study I think we should follow it up maybe six months from now as often and you can come back here and I don't know what other stuff to you spoke about early in their career sorry early in their life stage and you're right nearly 73% of the people are between 18 and 32 not surprised over 50% of the people you spoke to have two emotional right so in some ways not so young I mean some ways I mean not what I mean by that is not in terms of number but I mean by in terms of not so young as in they have responsibilities they have things to take care of which is why I mean some of the savings numbers are where it is right if you look at education cost of health care for children and other other activities that they will want to do for them probably staying away I mean 100% they'll be staying away from the family the family will be in a tier 2 town so if you look at all those expenses they add up fairly quickly right or the family is not you're right also non-native so there's like here yeah they have a family somewhere else yeah and they're alone yes right well actually not alone because that comes to the next thing which is that 38% of them share a room with four or more people yes I mean you know the rental costs in Bangalore in general right so I don't think I should be completely but in general it is an expense that it to live in so it's not hard to say I mean it's easy to see why they're going to be sharing and sharing boarding and the remaining 70% or live with family so I'm assuming there are people who are low from here local it's around towns around Sikbalapur, Darlalapur. Do you have any sense of what the other people they stay with do they stay with other people are also in doing the same thing I don't think that has come through that that clearly I think they're all individuals who are either staying with their parents in the far off in slightly far away with 30-40 kilometers from here but I don't think that there are others like that I mean if you're talking about multiple people within the same family that are doing this no no that's what I said that because you's a big chunk of them live with more than four people in a room yeah yeah right I'm wondering that are they are the other people who they share a room with are they also people who are in the gig economy I assume it'll be like that I mean I don't think it will be too far off a stress to think that all of them are in some form of a gig economy or the other because the another anecdote I have is when we were going to another office and there was a chapathi vendor nearby and he had a gig worker there who was going to you know bank chapathit's and give it take it to somebody and he said he was in a room and he was like my friend getting together and there's some sort of a party scene that they're planning with whatever 2000 that they're right so anecdotal but my assumption is that they form sort of a friend's network all of them tend to do this and are there otherwise they would always I mean I always think that you know from my own life right if there's one person who's doing extremely well somewhere else you tend to sort of say hey I want to do what you're doing correct if if it's in the room at least from a college roommate scenario if you're looking at it from that point of view if you know that there's something working for one guy you're like you know what you know he's done the right thing let me try and you know emulate that a little bit correct but that's not happening here right so my assumption is that they're all doing the same thing and this is the last at least in this section that we're talking about which is the thing that you very very strongly push back on 32% of the people who are employed sorry who are in gay economy are highly educated this means diploma holders graduates or post graduates I'm just saying if you look at the there is actually a pie chart here right of people who are if you look at below 10th class you may think it would be a big chunk because it's quote unquote unskilled it's not it's only 12% right 82% are like 10th class pass I'm just going down this I mean now we are I think the this part of the report is where you basically went into okay we now understood who you are we understand your background we understand how where you came from we understand what you study it all that now it's about what kind of work do you do and what is that entail and this is also a part that I think is very blind to people when they when they order all of this stuff when they use all of this stuff I don't think they understand this aspect really well and I feel like especially over here you have done some very interesting stuff you have gone into some stuff which is like things that obviously some of it is surprising and some of it is obvious questions but some of it is also not so obvious questions and obvious insights that come out I'll just tell you what they are that just trying out to me maybe right you can jump in with whatever you see first is 32% of them like I said are doing this have been doing this for more than two years right which means that this is like going on for a while formal work formal work only and like we said earlier 82% work more than nine hours a day if you look at that distribution you have a distribution over here there is a thing at the very end which is 8% of them work more than 14 hours a day nervous right it's insane those would be largely from the right cab right I was I was expecting that right and 74% work all seven days of the week and it's like it's not even close 75% is all seven days six days is 11 right so it's like the fall is like it's not even like a regular normal distribution that's not enough to work either you work all seven days of the week or it's almost like you don't do this at all right this is part is very interesting that I found which is obviously something that you wouldn't expect people to ask or someone like anyone doing this kind of a study I've never seen this kind of a study but I think it's going to be a very important statistic going forward not just for gig work what for many things in life 45% of the people you spoke to spend eight hours plus on screen I mean occupational hazard for sure right but still okay total screen in time of 8 plus r's, but out of that. that you said you asked for screen time on entertainment, which is the biggest chunk, 63% spend one to three hours on entertainment, which I mean, again, it's like, I mean, I think when I saw this, I was like, yeah, I mean, I can understand, right? And not just about, I can understand them. I'm saying that one to three hours per entertainment is, I don't think it's unusual, even for people who work in like, you know, white collar jobs, et cetera, you can see people scrolling Instagram and reels all over the place, right? So it's not, so there is a shared kitchen. I mean, I think that's one wonderful thing that geo has done for us, right? Well, why not? Okay. Okay. Let's at least use up to all our screen times to three hours. But no, I mean, they're not any different from white collar people, right? Entertainment is entertainment at the end of it. In fact, every delivery boy I've seen in between from bike to delivery in the lift, there's scrolling some kind of content over here. So that number is not really surprising. Okay. Fair. There is nothing else to do. Correct. It's really, I would say, mindless at this point. You're just, you know, app is telling you what to pick up. Yeah. App is telling you where to go. Yeah. Then you switch to Google Maps, figuring out where to go. Yeah. I mean, from now and then I need my dopamine rush to at least continue with the day. Correct. It is not such a fancy job that, you know, I'm looking forward to it type of a situation. Correct. So entertainment is one break that they get. It used to be a time, I mean, even now this happens a lot that when you take cab rides, right? I mean, people also ask this question sometimes. I mean, usually very privileged people want to do it. That my driver is always talking to someone on the phone. Right. Who is he talking to on the phone all the time? Right. And the answer to that question is, what else do you expect? Correct. And you know, I mean, I don't want to say this. So when I was in the US, right, I had a 90 minute commute to to my workplace and back. Where in the US? I was in Chicago. Okay. 90 minute commute one way. And I always find some people to call. Of course. Right. And for, I'll speak to some 1% for maybe 20 minutes and somewhere else, another 20 minutes, some there. So I don't find why the driver will do the same thing because there's 90 minutes of just open road. And what I can't listen to music all the time. I need some and sometimes the road, it gets sleepy. You want to talk to somebody. Correct. So I'm not surprised. They do that because I'm the same. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I find it very interesting that people are sitting at the back seat scrolling. You know, reals are like, who is this person talking to all the time? Let me upload or Twitter or the social media, right, sitting at the back seat. Who is he talking about? Well, I mean, come on. Yeah. I just think it's an interesting, unusual metric that you wouldn't typically think about in the context of quick covers, extreme time for entertainment. It's not something that you think about what you see all the time, like you said, right? So yeah, cool that you brought that up. Yeah. Then we're getting into very, very interesting stuff, right? You asked this very interesting question. Which again, I don't think people ask, but I feel like it's a great insight, which is 61 percent of the people you spoke to do not refer their friends or family to join. Now, the reason why I bring this up and I say it's very interesting is because and we're sitting in Indranagar in Bengaluru and we are surrounded by tech companies over here. And I'm sure you know this, which is that the most standard metric for a product where they basically, they've been drilled into product people, marketing people, et cetera, is this thing called NPS, right? Which is about essentially this thing that you use, would you recommend it to a family or friend on a scale of one to 10? And you basically, you will ask your customers and whatever score you get, there is something about detractor, promoter, neutral, et cetera. I don't want to get into it. And of course, there is a lot of criticism about NPS as a system. It's about forget about all that. But I'm just saying that that is in some ways the very same companies that are doing this are the ones whose product managers are running those NPS surveys on their customers and looking at those signals and saying, oh, this tells us how much our customers love us. Correct. And I don't know if they ever thought of doing this with their riders. Yeah, I mean, but at least you did. And this is quite damning, right? At 61% say we will not refer. Yeah, because there's no pride in the job. Yeah. I mean, one of the key things that we also as management consulting firms when we work with our family businesses, the first thing we look for is employee pride. Okay. Is the employee happy to be a part of us? And if they're happy, then they'll do wonders. But what is the pride here? There is no loyalty to the platform in any way. It's very clear also they switch apps very often. Correct. So if there is no pride, then what is the reason to recommend somebody? You're in trouble you come here. Do this for some time. But there is no like, oh, come here. Your future will be secure. I mean, there is no pride only. What is the? If you're so if. And I think it's by design also. I agree. I agree. So it's not that they want to create a situation where that should be like. Then it will get into more uncomfortable questions for these platforms. Then they have to start thinking about. So it's by design. It's like there is enough supply. There is no problem. Somebody or the other is coming and delivering. Correct. So there is no reason for them to recommend also. That same product manager need not worry about this NPS over here. Of course. Because that in. He's looking at repeatability of customer over there. Not really caring for repeatability over. Or retention or. Or retention. Exactly. So no problem. 29% of people rarely or never get breaks during shifts. Nearly 60% of people don't have any access. No, I mean, I'd like to reclassify that right. Sure. In a sense, they don't take a break. Okay. Fair enough. You can always switch off. Correct. Well, which is what these platforms will tell you. Yes, exactly. You can always switch off that. But you can. But the algorithm wants you to work more. So that you earn more. Correct. So as a result, you won't take a bit. That is the sort of like a never ending cycle there. But that's the unfortunate situation that you're doing. So yes, people, somebody who needs it a lot more will not take a break. Because he knows that he's going to get 3000 rupees today or 4000 rupees today. Yeah. There is another very interesting. Metric over here. This is algorithms the way they work. So I think they do have some kind of a limit to which you can do per day. Okay. That incentive also is kind of aligned. And I don't know this for sure yet. Because that's not there. It wasn't there in our question. Is it came about how much came out much later? Is that let us say that you can do 16 or 16 number of orders per day is your limit. Right. And let us say you do the 17th order and you can get maybe 22 people on us on that order. But let's a guy next to you is 10. Okay. In the same shop. Right. Yeah, you're the same dark store in the same dark store shop. Right. But that 17th order will not come to you. I'll go to him. It won't be 17th for him. It'll be the 11th for him. Because you know the 16 is so I don't know this. This I've heard. I've heard this otherwise not really. We didn't do any research on this particular piece. But it's not hard to imagine a scenario. It seems to reason it because if you look at it from the objective function of the platform, the platform does not gain anything by outliers. Exactly. In the sense that if there is one, it's not it's not like the quality of work is it's all fungible. Right. It's just going from point A to point B. Yeah. Nobody can go from point A to point B better than another person. Although it's next. It's like the margin next to nothing. So you are better off as a platform making sure that in some sense, I hate to use this word in some sense, you it's better to be slightly socialist in that sense where you have like 10 people you know who are hovering around your doctor, you might as well optimize for all of them. Yes. Rather than trying to optimize for any one or two of them who can't be outperform because there's no such thing as an outperformer. Correct. 60% of the people don't have any access to basic facilities and this includes rest area, room, drinking water. Yeah. I think this should be a must. But how do you solve for it? No, there's no harm. I mean, all the dark stores can have all this because they're only there. Within the dark store. The areas where they are generally congregating that could be special centers. You know, I assume that you meant while you're on the job with hard to access a washroom and I was waiting around actually. There are. But I was saying that a dark store is not fitted. No, if you just go around over here only in Indira, you will find that there are dark stores already over here and you will find a whole bunch of people waiting out there. Yeah, in fact, we haven't right across the road from our own. So there is no harm in providing these kind of facilities over there. It's not even there in the dark stores. It's not there at this point or there. At least not what we're seeing. Wow. That's pretty basic. Yeah. That is quite. I mean, it may be there for the people in the dark store, but not for these guys maybe. But it's not. It was that's a very easy basic thing to do. I agree. I agree. If I'm not wrong, I think at least for even this waiting thing that you said, like I think we're not talking, we're not covered in Abit and Urban Company, but I feel like they have, for the instant help that you're saying, they have these zones where they sit and wait, we don't know the conditions are there, I don't know, but I know that that is a little more, not like them, exactly, it's not like them standing and hovering outside, there is some inside-ish kind of a, Indoor-ish kind of. That could be a product of the nature of the work, right? That's also true, before you said about this, now what else is going to be inside the store? Exactly, yeah, it's literally fair. Okay, actually, even if you've traveled to Kerala, go to Kochi, take a cab, there's a nice driver's restroom over there for the drivers. On the way? No, no, in the sense, in the airport, by the time you take the airport cab, you'll give your coupon, you go out, and when you wait for the cab, there's a driver's restroom, it has a place where they can sleep a little bit rest, and then they can go pick up their cab. This is not hard for them to do these companies have enough capital to make this happen. I mean, not be even near the dark, so it can be anywhere else also. Sure, it could be a great marketing campaign also. Is they do it then make a great marketing campaign? For the great marketing campaign, they're not going to do it at B-Syletable. And then all of it, all of them can do it together, right? Okay, sure. 85% have gig work as the primary source of income. I think now we're getting into income. Is it coming as a surprise to either of you that for gig workers, this is while they're engaged in gig work, that this is their primary source of income? No, not as it didn't come as a surprise to us. I mean, I think we expected two things, this is not a gig work for a large percentage of them. And if it's not a gig work, then it automatically means that this is a primary source of income. Yeah, if you spend so much time doing it, then I'm not that surprised. Let's talk about the money that they're earning. We kind of touched upon this a little earlier. The next thing that you see is 57% of the people earn 20 to 35,000 per month. That's a pretty substantial amount, right? We touched upon that a little while ago as well. I think it's slightly higher than the state minimum wage, right? Yeah, it's almost done. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, so just to get into it, 26% on about 20 K and less, 57% on 20 to 35 K. And about 17% on 35 K plus. Yeah. Anything interesting that came up in you? No, I mean, these numbers are quite nice actually for the work that they're doing. There's no doubt. It's just that there's a whole element of the other costs that you had mentioned earlier. That is BF, ESI, these. Buying a buy call of that. Yeah, the maintenance of your bikes. There are a lot of additional costs that come into this. So at a gross level, yes, it sounds very rosy, but given that a lot of the expenditures are yours, just to, you know, do that job. I'm not talking about expenditures that come maybe post doing that job. A large percentage of them go into these things just to make sure that you're available for that ride. So in fact, if you look at say the savings thing, right, because it comes back to the same point that you said, if you look at that, if you look at the two chunks of people, people who make between 20 and 35 K people who make more than 35 K, 63% of those who make between 20 and 35 K have no savings. 52% of people who make more than 35 K have no savings. So it comes back to what you said, the costs are very high, there is income instability or there in or the next section, they're in debt. 42% of them are in debt, 48. I mean, and this is like across the, Yeah, but I think they're just mirroring what is generally happening with the country, right? I think the debt profile in general, I think the other few months ago, I was reading an article where it has moved from, I don't know, seven, eight percent or nine percent earlier to 33 or 44 percent or something like that. As a country, we are generally more indebted, I would say, than before, right? So I don't see that as a big surprise. And generally what, again anecdotal, but if you have a, if you've had house help or anybody, you'll always notice that they're always in debt. They'll always every two months, three months, they'll come and ask for some money here. So I'm not surprised with this finding that almost 50% of them have a debt obligation that they're unable to meet and have to take on some jobs to sort of make the end meet. Then there is a very interesting breakdown of work related expenses, very interesting insights here. Of course, some of them we saw coming, like a majority of them spend about 81 percent spend more than 2000 rupees on fuel. 9 percent spend more than 2000 rupees on EMI expenses, when we're not specifying what kind of EMI expenses, but I think we've kind of talked about a few of those things, buy it, etc. 73 percent spend about 2000 rupees are less on internet related expenses. 19 percent spend more than 6,000 on vehicle maintenance. And 94 percent don't spend on EV renters. 4 percent spend less than 2000 on vehicle rent. So a lot of them rent their I mean, if you notice, there is a whole startup that has made money of that only. So you look at it. So you look at it. So you look at a few other, I think there was another one. Bounce. Bounce. Yeah. So a lot of them come into the city looking for looking to do something and the easiest way to get started, no capital investment, okay, so. So if I had to really, and this was, I mean, what I'll read out was for the income slab of less than 2000 people. But if you go down, you look at the slabs of say people who are between 20,000 and 35,000 or more than 35,000 plus, if I really had to ask you sit broadly speaking, where are these expenses? Like what are the expenses that they have? What are the head, expense heads? Other than the what's been mentioned? Yeah, I mean, if I really had to suppose, for instance, I said, hyper vertically speaking, someone who's making say 25,000, 30,000, stick 30,000, and you say, oh, well, but they have a lot of expenses that get cancelled out. What are the various heads? One is of course rent, right? Which I'm imagining is shared, but it's still like, you know, 6,000, 7,000 something that because like 42,000 spend more than 5,000, it's that. So it's that. I guess the second is food expenses, right? That's two. Maybe let's give another 2,000, 3,000 at least. For that, although there are people who spend more than 5,000 other, but let's say it's that education is a chunk as well. 18% and the highest thing were 18% spend more than 5,000. So this education? Yeah, I mean, if you looked at it, the previous number which had 42% of them had more than one or two children, right? So education becomes an expense for them. Got it. Yeah, and then running off a house itself. Most of this will go home. Okay. So if you take out the costs that are related to getting doing your job, which would largely be related to internet rent, vehicle, and then we food, and then maybe some entertainment expenses. If you take those out, which would largely be about say 50% from there, the remaining 50% will, especially the high income category, in this case, the remaining 50% will go home. If it goes home, then you're looking at maybe your school schooling expense, you're looking at running off the home expense. If generally the big thing will be there, they'll be bidding a house. So there'll be some house related expenses. And then you have debt, debt repayment will be a huge deal towards some kind of an end goal related to this. Correct. And then you have if they're waging parents, then you have and parents welfare or health care expenses. So I mean, if you put all these things together, there's not much there. Especially if you have a couple of children, then 100% a lot of the expenses will go. We're getting into slightly better news with respect slightly. Okay, with respect to health, because that's also the other thing that you asked them about their health. You asked them about their safety. You and then asked them about again, some of these very interesting questions. Again, 49% get less than 7 hours of sleep every night, which of course is not great, but I was like slightly relieved to see a 51% of people get 7 or more hours, where I was like, okay, it's not great, but it's the bare minimum. I know the bar is very low right now. Okay, 45, 46% is like 5 to 7 hours, there's a really small chunk of this less than 5 hours is very concerning. 80% have meals on time. Right. Exactly. That's why I said slightly better news. Okay. But with that, we're going to get into more depressing stuff, which is 43% experience dehydration, acidity, over 50% experience fatigue, dizziness, nausea, body stress in a month. And this is, and these are young people we're talking about. Right. We are not even getting into. I mean, which obviously means one thing, that the system is overworking them in some way. Of course. And I mean, even in my job sometimes I forget to drink water and I'm sitting in an AC office. Yeah. Right. And when you're out on the street, especially in this heat, it's easily possible that large percentage of people will be going through this, which is where the earlier point that we made, with concerning rest areas, having some kind of decent rest room, kind of helps alleviate a lot of this stress. Maybe even an occasional lunch can help alleviate some nutritious lunch you can have in the office. We do this for even manufacturing facilities. So why can't we do it over here? So easily solvable. But it should be there. Of course, the other again, slightly good news is that 95% of them report that they have not had any minor body injury, 98% no major body injury. People were extremely critical when the 10 minute delivery started and it was going on saying, "Oh my God, you're going to encourage like rash speeding and they're going to be very rash." Which I mean, of course the platforms say, "No, no, no, we don't really incentivize that. The dark stores are closed by." I get it. I get what both sides are saying, but I think at least from the gig workers' standpoint, it is that 91% have said that we have never had, we only had, sorry, we're not even minor vehicle damage. 98% has said we've not had major vehicle damage as well. Pressure to break traffic rules, 78% face pressure to break traffic rules either, occasion of frequently. So clearly there is something here. There is something unsaid here. Maybe it's not as blatant as an app telling you that, for instance, I think even Zomato, was it Deepindagoyal who says that, "No, no, it's not like when an order is there, there is a countdown that tells them you need to deliver by that time. We don't show that to them." I mean, okay, maybe that is true, but I'm just saying that, but there is certainly some kind of a pressure on delivery time in some way, right? I don't think it is delivery time as much as there is a pressure on that this many orders I want to do per day. Got it. Yeah, so get it. It's more an incentive for how much I want to earn as opposed to a time bound thing. So I'm thinking. And if the metric is related to whatever, 16 orders, 20 orders, whatever you do per day, then it automatically incentivizes you to get there quickly. Without there being a quote unquote, "Oh, you've got a countdown timer going on your app that you need to deliver this by, right?" So, and this is unfortunately very true now, and it's been bothering me a lot because every time I'm going home, I'm always seeing people going the other way on one way. Or there's a zebra caustering and there's a red light and there are like three or four bikes that will go. They'll bang into somebody, they may not bang into somebody. It's always like a scream and shout thing that will happen between two people as they go by. So it's unnecessary. It just makes us feel that we are moving to a lollest type of a situation where you just go whichever way you want to. Because you know, you've got to make that delivery somebody's got to eat that food in 10 minutes. Yeah. But it's actually sad to see. I mean, I'm and the government also can't do anything in this situation. What are you going to catch? And what are you going to find? It's like, there's nothing going to work in that critical situation. Almost any times the cops are going to get, plus no, helmet, it's nothing. So it's not, I don't know how to solve this. I don't have an answer for it. But in the situation that we're in, a lot of people may not, all the, all even the bike riders may not have actually gone to, you know, I don't know if they have a license. Maybe they have a license. Maybe they don't, maybe it's not original. Maybe it's fake. I don't know what kind of verification they do to make sure that happens. Even if you have one, it doesn't, it doesn't mean that you will follow the rules. Right. So we've seen this. We need to find some structure around this. And I'm not saying this. I'm just talking about the concerns it is in only like you have all people who are crossing the road. You have so many other issues that are happening, but we'll come one way. You'll stop. You'll try and tell him to go. No, you'll go into the footpath. You'll go. It's just. I don't know if that's the kind of society we want to kind of encourage and live in going forward. It was scary. Earlier, you could at least walk on the footpath. So you can't do that anymore without having some vehicles coming back and forth. Right. So there is a situation where we are creating an environment that is hard to execute from a governmental standpoint. Society needs the convenience. So they're okay to let it slide for some time. But the more we let it slide, it becomes part of our process and then it becomes harder for us to rectify over time. So I don't know. I'm happy that they've not gotten into large accidents of any kind because luckily we have a traffic issue and traffic itself is very hard to get into a large accident. And you traffic itself is slow. So we are not going to get into a bad accident. But I don't know if that is something that we want to encourage. Yeah, I'll just say two things that I share the I share the pain. Also because I don't own a car. So I'm either for me, it's either public transport or of course I do use the ubers and Nama Yatri's of the world and I or I walk and I think for me as a person who's walking and of course as a pedestrian, it just gets really, really difficult and everyone knows and we're and by the way, we're talking about very, very privileged position of sitting in Indra Nagar 100 feet while we're recording the same thing. So it's quite bad here. It's quite bad nearer office, which is in fact, on office right now near office. It's again in Indra Nagar. It's now right now as we are recording this. I cannot walk. It cannot be done. The entire street is dug up. Okay. And it's kind of yesterday and today. Yeah, they were like pipes lying there for like concrete by lying there for like a month. I mean, I don't know what's happening. So I feel like, yes, I share the pain. I think earlier, because I'm also like you live in Bangalore for a long time, whenever I see people using the pedestrian or the footpaths, getting their bikes on et cetera. Like I would try to challenge. I would try to fight. I would try to like, and I think now, especially because of gig work, I find myself more conflicted now because I'm like, yeah, you're, but maybe you have a delivery. So okay, fight. Use it. So it's very, very strange. It'll become the norm then it'll become hard for. I agree. I mean, this is the wrong time, but I will just say that I'll plug a old two by two episodes that we did. It's called How do we fix Bangalore? Okay. And he had Prava also known as Bangavok on this podcast to specifically ask this question. Like, what is the systemic solution to all this? And he had some interesting points anyway. We can link that on the show. Last part. And I think we'll probably end with this, which is. We started by talking about who they were. I think we have to end by talking about what do they want? What do they desire? What do their aspirations and what their dreams are? And I think again, these are all parts that you covered as well. And you asked this question, which is. What is this? What are their long term goals? What do they have? What do they want to do? And I'm just going to very quickly read out and long term career goals. By the way, this is something that we are all white collar employees. This is something that our bosses would also ask. We are the last cause where do you see yourself? Five years from now. And I'm glad that you went and asked that question. I'm going to read out what they are. 29% of them said they want to do the. Sorry, the largest. Let me explain the largest group of respondents. 29% are still undecided about their long term career goal. Right. Which is not surprising in the sense that even in like I imagine if you went to a random office and you asked. Poll 100 people, they would also say. They were very similar. Yeah. They said of people. If you asked me at that age, I would probably say something very similar. Followed by 39% of them who either want to start their own business or get a formal job. Right. So there is aspiration on this side at least. Yeah. And. Which is nice to see right that that they understand that there is a larger goal that they have in their mind. And they really look at this as a short term as a true gig at least these 39% of the people. And generally these. This business piece. Okay. Could be a provision store. It could be it could be anything that is it could be a franchise ownership of something. So but I think it's good that they have that little end goal become like this micro entrepreneurs of some kind. And we need that in India in general. So it's good that at least we saw we found that it's not just mindless. You know, people don't have any aspirations of any kind. So it's kind of nice to see that at least 40% of them have this. Have this idea of you know getting into a formal job because like I said, there's no pride in this. Okay. And at some point, they don't know tell people also know that they can get them just to deliver it. So it's I think it's that thing that also wants these people to get out of it. This is good. I mean, you work a way out of it. Yeah. 95% of workers express being satisfied with income from gig work. Right. So I think this is the paradox. Yes. It's that comes back to the title of your. Yes. This was my surprising finding actually. I understand. I'll just say my last closing thoughts. My last closing thoughts on this are I feel like if I really had to step back, we have gone through the entire report from the beginning to the end more or less. I feel like if I really had to step back, I feel like what this report essentially is saying is. We are at this very, very important. I don't know the word is like it's this is what called interregnum, which is like between two. You know, It's like between one when one king and one empire passes and another empire comes right and I think we are at that point And the reason I say that is because what this report really says is here are these people. They're all doing these jobs It's it's very clear that what the thing that they're doing right now is difficult They spend a lot of time doing it They make money, but the money they make is going away. So it's not like they're able to build anything sustainable out of it But they continue to do it every day under really difficult conditions facing To some extent, you know, they don't have major health problems, but they have some problems They have some issues they're trying to figure out all of this out and I think the thing that keeps them going is that last Statistics the last two parts which is that they say okay. We are happy with what we're getting right now Yeah, and the only reason we're happy without you getting right now is because we have this really You know rosy picture an aspiration of what we want this to go So we believe that this is this middle step Towards something in the future that we cannot entirely define But this thing in the future we know is going to be better than what it is today and for that we will go through what we have today and You know make up peace with it and go through it because we see it as It's like if you go to an engineering college and it's a horrible And you know like okay fine. It's like only four years after this I can do whatever I want I can get whatever it is so what if things don't this thing. Let me just make the most of what I can Correct and let me just get through this period exactly But I feel like once that drags on Continues keeps going Without and that future becomes more and more elusive and distant and distant and I think that is where things are going to start to become Much more difficult. No, I agree with you and and I think and so anyone including you who's working to make that future closer and Easier we talked about formal jobs things that are not as mindless etc and to make those opportunities available I think that is that is a part of me also generally regulation lags this kind of innovation, right? so I think we as a state can come together and maybe have a much more stronger formal gig work act that can help standardize The living the way it should be conducted for for everybody on these platforms It need not be that one person gets a 76 core and the other person gets a 40 score can be a uniform Uniform across at least they are safeguarded in some way or the other because Your your question in the waiting of is it going to break it's not going to break right so it's gonna be here This is going to be part of our lives going forward. So we might as well formalize it in some way through interventions from policy as well as Fantastic Thank you for listening to this episode of 2x2 this episode was makes by a resident sound engineer Rajeev CN If you feel there's something we've missed out in this discussion or feel some numbers of facts don't add up You can write to us at 2x2 at the ken.com and if you're listening to this episode on Apple podcasts Please sure some love by leaving us a rating lastly if you love the episode Share it with people your friends family or colleagues who might find it insightful as well We'll be back next week with an exciting discussion and a 2x2 for you to think about [Music]