Entrepreneurs-by-chance who set up a thriving marketplace for gig workers

Gigindia, started by engineering students Sahil Sharma and Aditya Shirole, provides remote working opportunities to 5,000 people and plans to ramp this to 100,000 by 2025

Back in 2016-17, two engineering students from Pune, Sahil Sharma and Aditya Shirole, were sharing flats with their classmates, many of whom were worried about not getting internships. The reason being, the companies were located at the opposite end of Pune, such as Hinjewadi, far from the college campus. Travelling to that end of the city for work, even while ensuring the mandatory 75 per cent attendance in final-year classes was a challenge for them.

This was also the time Uber, Ola, Swiggy and other service providers were growing rapidly, giving flexibility to people to work at their convenience and earn. 

This sparked an idea in the duo to create a platform that essentially connects the students with companies, which in turn offer internship assignments that the former can complete remotely, gaining experience and earning some money in the process. 

Sharma and Shirole began adopting gig models to help their friends connect with companies through GigIndia, a platform they founded in 2017. What developed as an offline model to help college students, has today become a successful marketplace that provides on-demand work completion for companies through a gig workforce of jobseekers. Interestingly, this was created by two people, who never dreamed of becoming entrepreneurs. 

Sharma's father is an army officer, while Shirole's parents are doctors. Entrepreneurship was not in their blood. The batchmates, who were pursuing B Tech at Pune Institute of Computer Technology, were working on several projects together in the second and third years. In the process, they came across stories of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates who had leveraged technologies not only to change lives, but also to make money. The inspiration for the duo came from here.

However, neither informed their parents that they had bypassed their college placements. It was only after their startup began generating lakhs in revenues that they told their families about their venture. Even before their first venture together, the two classmates and friends had engaged in various tech projects for their college.

They started with one gig worker in 2017. However, in the first year itself, the duo was able to provide employment avenues to 1,000-plus gig workers through the platform. Today, the company has around 5,000 gig workers and targets around 100,000 people by 2025.

“We don't want people to travel to tier-I cities for jobs. Especially after the pandemic, companies have realised remote working can be successful and we want to leverage it,” says Sharma, adding that his business is not only back to pre-covid level, but is also rapidly increasing month-on-month. 

The gig economy is broadly divided into three types of job roles – blue-, grey- and white-collar. Gig economy workers in the organised sector in India are currently estimated at over 20 million. The gig size is projected to grow at a CAGR of 17 per cent, and is likely to touch a gross volume of $455 billion by 2023, as per Assocham.

GigIndia claims to be able to curate the right kind of workforce, turning out to be a win-win situation for both, those seeking such services, and those with the necessary skills. Last year, the highest amount that a gigger earned was about 40,000-Rs 50,000 a month, while the average monthly salary was Rs 20,000-25,000.

At GigIndia, they first enrol job seekers for initial skilling and training, after which they are provided with job avenues through which they can earn their livelihood remotely.

For the companies, unlike conventional methods where they would pay for fixed cost, based on number of people taken for work, GigIndia is a variable-cost model, with payment based on outcome and results. Besides, at GigIndia, work can commence in three days unlike the minimum 2-3 months in conventional systems. The company claims to eliminate overheads involved with recruiting, training, and managing a workforce. 

GigIndia offers on-the-go trained giggers who deliver quality performance, managed by using AI/ML-based platforms whereby customers receive output at their planned budget. The platform focuses on customer excellence, operating through a ‘pay-per-results’ model. This means a gigger only gets paid for every valid unit submitted. The platform has built processes to streamline end-to-end gig execution for customers. With various stakeholders such as customers, gig performers and and GigIndia's Internal Operations team involved in execution, the firm's cutting-edge tech service helps them sync well together.

With more than 800,000 gig workers registered on the platform across 200-plus cities in India, and despite significant loss in business due to the lockdown in March, GigIndia closed November with the highest revenue ever. The platform also provided meaningful employment avenues to job seekers by completing 13 million gigs on the platform during the past eight months, meeting the growing demand for remote work operations. GigIndia also observed that the number of gig workers from Tier-2, 3 and 4 cities rose from 5.22 per cent in March 2020 to 58.11 per cent in September 2020. Further, a rise of 287 per cent (approx 4x growth) in female gig workers on the platform was noticed in October 2020 vis-à-vis April 2020.

How the model works

Companies essentially pay on the basis of per unit of work completed. So let's assume the job on hand is acquiring 100 new customers. If the fixed sum, or unit payment, per customer acquired is, say, Rs 500, then the value of the contract that GigIndia will sign with the company is Rs 50,000. Gigindia gets paid for every customer its team of giggers acquires during the period stipulated in the contract. If all 100 customers are acquired, Gigindia gets the entire Rs 50,000, but if, say, 50 are acquired, the company will payRs 25,000. Gigindia then keeps its margin and distributes the rest of the proceeds to the giggers on the basis of their individual performances. In other words, Gigindia only charges the client on the basis of results and pays its giggers only on the basis of results as well. Some of its clients include Tata, Amazon, Swiggy, Paytm, BookMyShow, Uber among others.

Last month, Explorium Innovative Technologies Pvt Ltd, which operates GigIndia, raised Rs 7.6 crore in pre-Series A funding. The firm will use the capital raised for enhancing its technological infrastructure.

The round was led by Incubate Fund India with participation from Beyond Next Ventures, Avaana Capital's Anjali Bansal, and Vineet Patni.

Other participants include former TCS CEO and managing director, S Ramadorai, Former MD and co-founder of Tasty Bites, Ravi Nigam, former Tech Mahindra CEO Kiran Deshpande and Clarice Technologies co-founder Shashank Deshpande, who also mentor the company.

“GigIndia has been successful in empowering enterprises to scale effectively during the pandemic thereby providing meaningful employment avenues to job seekers. The company has seen consistent business growth, even through the pandemic, and we are sure this trend will improve with time. We are excited to have Anjali and Vineet join us as investors in the company. Their vast experience and knowledge will help GigIndia grow manifold in the future,” said Nao Murakami, Founder & General Partner-Incubate Fund India.