India has granted authorized standing to tens of millions of gig and platform employees underneath its newly applied labor legal guidelines, marking a milestone for the nation’s supply, ride-hailing and e-commerce workforce — but with advantages nonetheless unclear and platforms starting to evaluate their obligations, entry to social safety stays out of attain.
The popularity stems from the Code on Social Safety — one among 4 labor legal guidelines the Indian authorities introduced into impact on Friday — greater than 5 years after the parliament first handed them in 2020. It’s the solely a part of the brand new framework that addresses gig and platform employees, because the remaining three codes — overlaying wages, industrial relations, and office security — don’t prolong minimal earnings, employment protections or working-condition ensures to this quickly increasing workforce.
India has one of many world’s largest and fastest-growing gig economies, with business estimates suggesting that greater than 12 million folks ship meals, drive ride-hailing cabs, type e-commerce packages, and carry out different on-demand providers for digital platforms. The sector has turn into a important supply of employment, particularly for younger and migrant employees shut out of formal job markets, and is projected to increase additional as firms scale logistics, retail, and hyperlocal supply.
Firms from Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart to Indian quick-delivery apps equivalent to Swiggy, Everlasting’s Blinkit, and Zepto, in addition to ride-hailing corporations together with Uber, Ola, and Rapido, depend on gig employees to run their companies within the South Asian nation — the world’s second-largest web and smartphone market after China. But regardless of powering a few of India’s most dear tech companies, most gig employees function exterior conventional labor protections and lack entry to fundamental social safety.
The newly applied labor legal guidelines are meant to vary that, by defining gig and platform employees in statute and requiring aggregators, equivalent to food-delivery and ride-hailing platforms, to contribute 1–2% of their annual income (capped at 5% of funds made to such employees) to a government-managed social safety fund. However the particulars stay murky: what actual advantages will truly be supplied, how employees will entry them, and the way contributions can be tracked throughout a number of platforms, and when payouts will start all stay unclear, elevating considerations that significant protections could take years to materialize.
The Code on Social Safety creates a authorized framework for gig employees to be coated underneath schemes such because the Staff’ State Insurance coverage, provident fund, and government-backed insurance coverage. Nevertheless, the extent of those advantages — together with eligibility, contribution ranges, and supply mechanisms — stays unclear and can depend upon future guidelines and scheme notifications.
A key a part of the framework is the creation of Social Safety Boards at each the central and state ranges, tasked with designing and overseeing welfare schemes for gig and platform employees. The central board should embody 5 representatives of gig and platform employees and 5 representatives of aggregators, all nominated by the federal government, alongside senior officers, specialists, and state representatives, per the Code. However there may be little readability on how selections can be made, how a lot affect employee representatives will even have, or who will in the end management selections on funding and profit supply.
Techcrunch occasion
San Francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026
“We have to wait and see what precisely is within the authorities’s thoughts on the subject of implementing the 4 Codes, and what it hopes to do for gig employees,” mentioned Balaji Parthasarathy, a professor at IIIT Bangalore and principal investigator of the Fairwork India undertaking. “After which we additionally must see what the states translate on the bottom.”
Parthasarathy famous that as a result of labor coverage in India is shared between the federal and state governments — listed within the “concurrent checklist” of the Indian Structure — state governments are chargeable for designing, notifying, and administering most of the schemes wanted to make the Code on Social Safety operational for gig employees.
That raises the potential of uneven entry, as some states transfer rapidly to determine social safety boards and roll out mechanisms, whereas others delay or deprioritize the trouble because of political or fiscal constraints. Current examples — equivalent to Rajasthan’s stalled laws after it was handed in 2023, and Karnataka’s Gig Staff Act, which was applied quickly after clearing the state meeting — underscore how employees’ protections could in the end depend upon the place they reside moderately than the legislation itself.
Platform firms have publicly welcomed the reform, however are nonetheless largely evaluating what it’ll require of them. An Amazon India spokesperson informed TechCrunch the corporate helps the Indian authorities’s intent behind the labor overhaul and is evaluating the modifications it might want to introduce. A spokesperson for Zepto mentioned the corporate welcomes the brand new labor codes as “an enormous step towards clearer, less complicated guidelines that defend employees whereas supporting ease of doing enterprise,” including that the modifications will assist strengthen social safety for its supply companions with out undermining the pliability that quick-commerce operations depend on.
Meals supply agency Everlasting, previously often known as Zomato, mentioned in a inventory trade submitting that the Social Safety Code is a step towards extra uniform guidelines and that it doesn’t anticipate the monetary influence to threaten its long-term enterprise.
Nonetheless, Aprajita Rana, a accomplice at company legislation agency AZB & Companions, mentioned the change “will naturally have a monetary influence” on India’s e-commerce sector, as employee contributions are actually being formalized. It’s going to additionally create new compliance obligations, requiring firms to make sure all employees of their networks are registered with the government-managed fund, decide whether or not people are related to a number of aggregators and the best way to keep away from duplicative advantages, and arrange inner grievance mechanisms.
“Whereas the legislation has the best intent, gig employee constructions in India are fairly novel, and sensible challenges in compliance will emerge because the legislation takes power,” Rana informed TechCrunch.
One of many largest hurdles for gig employees looking for advantages underneath the newly applied legislation can be registering on the Indian authorities’s E-Shram portal, launched in 2021 as a nationwide database of unorganized employees. The portal had registered greater than 300,000 platform employees as of the top of August, although the federal government estimates India’s gig workforce at round 10 million. Commerce unions, together with the Indian Federation of App-Primarily based Transport Staff (IFAT), which has greater than 70,000 members, are working to assist gig employees enroll to allow them to entry the advantages.
Ambika Tandon, a PhD candidate on the College of Cambridge and an affiliate of the nationwide commerce union Centre of Indian Commerce Unions (CITU), mentioned registering on the portal may imply misplaced wages for gig employees, since they must take time without work to fill in required particulars.
“These employees work for 16 hours a day,” she informed TechCrunch. “They don’t have time to go and register themselves on the federal government portal.”
CITU can be among the many ten main Indian commerce unions calling for the withdrawal of the brand new labor legal guidelines, forward of nationwide protests deliberate for Wednesday.
The advantages of registering on the E-Shram portal aren’t compelling for a lot of gig employees, Tandon famous, as a result of the legislation doesn’t deal with extra fast considerations equivalent to fluctuating earnings, account suspensions, and sudden termination of accounts — points that employees say matter way more proper now than entry to insurance coverage or provident fund advantages.
Commerce unions usually arrange strikes to push platforms to handle these considerations straight. Nevertheless, such actions can disrupt everybody concerned, together with customers, and put employees at additional threat, as they aren’t paid whereas placing and should even face termination for collaborating.
“Whereas the social safety guidelines have now been put in place, we demand a minimal wage and an employer–worker relationship for gig and platform employees, that are but to be set by the federal government,” mentioned Shaik Salauddin, founder president of the Telangana Gig and Platform Staff Union (TGPWU), which has greater than 10,000 members within the southern state of Telangana, and nationwide common secretary of IFAT. “We urge the federal government to acquire knowledge from aggregators and safe their financial contributions to the fund to start out providing advantages to employees.”
There’s a broader debate over whether or not gig employees must be handled as staff — a query the brand new labor legal guidelines don’t deal with. The Social Safety Code defines gig and platform employees as a separate class, moderately than extending them the rights and protections that include worker standing. In distinction, courts and regulators in markets such because the U.Ok., Spain, and New Zealand have moved towards recognizing platform employees as staff or “employees,” entitled to minimal wages, paid go away, and different advantages. In some U.S. jurisdictions, regulators and courts have pushed for platform employees to be handled as staff or equally protected employees, although many ride-hail and supply drivers stay labeled as impartial contractors.
“With this legislation, the Indian authorities has settled this debate by saying that these gig employees don’t sit throughout the ambit of employment or different protections,” Tandon mentioned.
The Indian labor ministry didn’t reply to a request for remark.
