Potential for 7.91 million gig jobs in Karnataka

The demand for gig workers in Karnataka is estimated to be 7.91 million over the next one year and the state government is looking to cash in on this explosion by taking some of these jobs to rural areas.

"The potential demand for white-collared gig workers for 2022 in Karnataka is approximately six million. Further, the potential demand for blue-collared gig workers is approximately 1.91 million," the Karnataka Skill and Entrepreneurship Task Force has said in its report to the government. Gig jobs in India will reach approximately 80-90 million in the next 8-10 years, it said.

Gig work broadly means short-term jobs "outside of the traditional employer-employee relationship" and includes platform workers, especially those using an online medium to provide services.

At present, most gig jobs are in Bengaluru. "But, rural is a big focus," IT/BT Minister C N Ashwath Narayan told DH. "We are working on the required systemic transformation with accident insurance and safety equipment for workers. We want to create opportunities for women also with part-time work," he said.

According to the task force, a 28-member group representing various government wings and departments, the major sectors employing gig workforce in Karnataka are information technology, content creation, social media marketing, communications, food & beverages, art & design, independent contractors and consultants.

"Gig economy isn’t about hailing a cab on Uber," Karnataka Vision Group for Startups chairperson Prashanth Prakash said, adding that local service delivery will happen more and more outside urban centres and that is where the potential lies.

"Ours is a demand-first approach in which you are invariably engaging and working with companies that are going to provide this demand for workers," Prakash, partner at global VC firm Accel, said. "One type of gig workers is those who provide certain services that are organised for the customer by platform and this is largely being done in urban centres. But, what we are seeing is this is picking up in the agriculture sector."

He cited the example of farm machinery. "Say, there's machinery needed on hire, or a drone to do a certain work for you...all of this will very soon be organised in the form of gig economy. Similarly, we are looking at the fisheries and dairy sector," he said.

Narayan said the government is looking at the "grower-to-consumer" model through village-level entrepreneurs. "Wherever there’s demand, we will scale up," he said.

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