The Other Ten Minute Economy

Dear Reader,

Every morning at eight am sharp, Sheetal, whose name we’ve changed to protect her privacy, arrives at a park in South Delhi to join seven other women from her ‘hub’. They sit with their phones open, waiting for bookings on the Insta Help app. Other domestic workers, who don’t work through platforms, gather there too during their breaks.

“The app system is good,” Sheetal told me. “We get paid on time, every two weeks. If something goes wrong, there’s a manager we can complain to.”

“But, don’t you miss the bonding that you had with that one family you worked for before?” I asked her.

“We don’t come here to bond. We come here to work,” she said. 

The other domestic workers chimed in. 

“Yes, we would work for the apps too if we could. But we’re too old,” said one woman.

Their clarity surprised me. These women talk so differently from quick commerce delivery workers, who speak of exhaustion and stress, and penalties if they get late. 

The instant house help workers I spoke to said they didn’t mind the ten-minute deadline either. Gathering at hubs made it easier to reach potential employers’ homes on time. If they were running late, they informed their managers, who handled communication with clients.

But there’s a catch.

Right now, the economics of instant house help don’t add up. I booked my first job on Pronto for just over a rupee. At the same time, workers like Sheetal earn a reliable monthly income of around Rs 25,000 on platforms like Insta Help.

Venture capital is funding that gap, said Anupam Singhal, founder of Bookmybai.com, a company that helps families hire permanent domestic workers. He said instant house help is still a new category, and companies are busy creating the market. 

Anupam says Bookmybai is sitting out the ten-minute segment because demand for instant help is limited. But he still wants these platforms to succeed.

“ I really hope and wish and, pray…that this industry works because a lot of capital has gone into it already.  If they do not survive, it puts a very big question mark on the entire industry,” he said. 

Anupam’s concern goes beyond competition.

Domestic work is the largest segment of India’s blue collar workforce. “More often than you might imagine, workers are massively abused, exploited, harassed, mentally, financially, physically, you name it,” Anupam said. 

That’s why the instant house help segment matters.

For all its flaws, it introduces something domestic work in India has long lacked: structure.

In the latest episode of The Signal Brief, I speak to workers, industry insiders and consumers on instant house help and whether this model can last.  

To learn more, check out the latest episode of The Signal Brief.

You can find The Signal Brief on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

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Best,
Kudrat
on behalf of The Core

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