18 Top Gig Economy Platforms From India In 2024

Do you love Jazz? 

You may say yes, while a tad confused about how Jazz and the gig economy are intertwined. Let me tell you! 

Let’s rewind time.

It’s the early 1900s.

Often, jazz musicians referred to their solo performances as gigs. Slowly with time, the catchphrase branched outside the music industry, and people started looking for temporary jobs or ‘gigs,’ both short-term & long-term; be it for outdoor chores, product deliveries, photography, creative writing, and whatnot! 

This rise in the number of temporary jobs gave birth to what we fondly call now as Gig Economy. 

What is Gig Economy?

India is en route to being one of the sought-after hotspots for the gig economy; IBEF projects the country to have over 350 million gig jobs by 2025. India currently has over 15 million freelance workers employed across various sectors. 

In simple words, we can define gig economy as, 

A market opportunity where any temporary jobs or tasks are taken up by an individual for an organization, usually for short durations. Gig workers typically are freelancers, contractors, or independent consultants who extend their expertise, on a part-time or full-time basis, for any organization in need. 

Even then, a gap exists between gig hirers and workers; how can the two meet, greet, and collaborate? 

Today, let’s look at some of the best gig economy platforms that bridge this gap and facilitate the two parties to come under one roof. 

Note: Like all our blogs, we aren’t ranking these gig-enabling platforms; simply curating them for you. Oh, and we understand that this isn’t an exhaustive list, so you must stay tuned for more updates on this listicle! 🙂 

Going in loud with the Made in India mantra, here are the different categories and the key gig-enabling players. 

List of Top Cab-Service Gig Economy Platforms for 2023

Ola: I say Hola, you say Ola!

My apologies for that terrible try at rhymes & puns. More seriously, the gig economy platforms’ list would be incomplete without Ola Cabs. A decade-old, this gig economy platform employs over 1.5 million cab drivers and is the most sought-after taxi app alongside Uber.

Carzonrent: This platform helps users reach their desired destination, be it a high-end Merc or an elegant hatchback!

• Timely airport pickup? Check!
• A plethora of cars to choose from? Check!
• With/Without chauffeur cabs? Check!

Carzonrent has, in all senses, evolved & adapted to growing technology from the 2000s. 

Quick Ride: “We are on a mission to remove 1 million cars from the roads daily!” This is the vision of the carpooling platform Quick Ride, which brings together verified working professionals from all walks of life to travel together at the desired time and to a preferred location. The benefits are multi-fold:

• Lesser carbon pollution,
• Affordable travel rates for ride seekers,
• Extra income for ride-givers.

Built for individuals and corporates, the app has over 4 million users. 

List of Best Delivery & Hyperlocal Gig Economy Platforms

Woohoo! We all love this category—cheers to the delivery superheroes who bring us food, staples, and groceries even at night. 

Swiggy: Remember the diabetic uncle who sneaks gulab jamuns without his wife’s knowledge?

His partner in crime is none other than the food-tech platform Swiggy, one of the fastest Indian companies to enter the unicorn club. As of Feb 2021, this gig economy platform that started with just 6 delivery persons now have more than 1,30,000 (2,20,000 before the pandemic) and has crossed the milestone of more than a million daily deliveries.

Zomato: Have you heard of Foodiebay? Maybe not. What about Zomato? Duh!

The idea to start a food portal where people could order their meals at leisure struck the founders when they saw colleagues stuck in long queues to order lunch. Since 2008, this gig platform has come a long way, gone IPO recently, and entered the unicorn club a decade later in 2018. 

Dunzo: If Nike says do it, here we say just Dunzo it.

This hyperlocal delivery platform has helped users get essential goods and services for the past 5+ years. This gig platform has grown 40X in the last two years. Dunzo recently collaborated with NITI Aayog, World Economic Forum, and Apollo Hospitals and launched drone services as part of Telangana’s ‘Medicines from the sky’ project. 

Porter: An on-demand courier delivery service platform with roots in 12 cities, Porter aims to simplify hyperlocal intra-city delivery with 2,3, and 4-wheeler deliveries based on requirements. Not just this, this gig platform also provides house-shifting services and has tailored solutions for both individuals and businesses. The platform has over 1,50,000+ registered driver-partners and more than 4 million customers. 

List of Popular On-demand Home Services Gig Apps

Urban Company: Salon at home? House repair jobs? Painting services?

Urban Company would nod a yes to all of the above. This on-demand home service platform currently has 35,000+ trained professionals and delivers 7,50,000+ services monthly, with an international presence across 4 countries.

Housejoy: Just like the name, this gig economy platform aims to deliver home services by trained professionals who are insured and also have the option for re-work. TLDR; makes house chores a joy! Housejoy has served over 1Million+ customers and has over 65,000 professionals. The various services you’ll find on the gig-driven platform are home cleaning, repair, virus fumigation, appliance service & repair, home salons, and more!

Helpr: This gig-enabling platform steps in as the next-door helpr provides a variety of necessary services such as cleaning services, pest control services, courier services, and relocation and at present runs fully-fledged in the city of Bengaluru. 

Mr Right: Carpenter, plumber, electrician… the list goes on regarding the services provided by Mr. Right to help you find the right home service. In addition, the app facilitates appliance repair, deep cleaning services, and more! With a few details, this gig platform onboards professionals with a proven track record in the services; and has more than 60,000 gig workers.

List of Creator-centric Gig Economy Platforms for 2023

Now that we’ve covered some of the exponentially scaling categories, let’s look at the landscape in the creator economy.

Workflexi 

Workflexi is a gig economy platform that connects businesses or individuals with gig workers that are specialized in facets, both technical, non-technical, & creative, like IT skills, Accounting, Taxation, Digital marketing, Interior designing, Baking, Creative skills such as photography, dancing, singing, sketching, cinematography, etc.

The platform delivers on-time payments by avoiding common settlement delays for platforms dealing with payment gateways and traditional payment transfers. Furthermore, the platform has traditional hassles related to payment gateways, such as chunky transaction fees, and has saved more than 90% on overheads.

When we had a chat with Sandesh Kangod, Founder & CEO at Workflexi, here’s what he had to say. 

“We wanted a payment process that is instant for our gig workers and couldn’t find a payment gateway that could do that for us. We also wanted companies to transfer money from their current account to the wallet, and with Decentro that’s possible.”

Sandesh Kangod, Founder & CEO at Workflexi

Flexiple 

What if your business with a gig requirement had access to the top 1% of talented freelancers? Flexiple is a gig economy platform that pre-screens freelancer developers and designers. 

The platform has a multi-level assessment system with pass rates ranging from 45.4% to less than 1%. This ensures only the crème de la crème of the talent greets businesses that sign up to hire for gigs. Some include technical prowess, communication skills, background checks, and performance consistency. 

The platform also offers a 1-week trial period to enable companies to assess the synergies with the gig workers before plunging in for free! Moreover, a business can get the ball rolling for their projects in a week with Flexiple. It comes with 3 plans:

• Individual Contributor $30-50/hour
• Multi-faceted Contributor $50-80/hour
• Leader & Diverse Contributor $80+/hour 

When we chatted with Karthik Sridharan, Co-founder & CEO at Flexiple, here’s what he says about bridging the gap between business and gig seekers! 

“At Flexiple, we believe the future will involve high-quality talent and top companies partnering on specific projects they find mutually interesting & relevant. A trusted network where such intellectual exchange can happen is what we are building.”

Karthik Sridharan, Co-founder & CEO at Flexiple

One Impression 

One Impression is an influencer marketing platform that aims to simplify marketers’ lives. 

The platform is home to over 14 Million+ influencers right, including celebrities, micro-influencers, IG legends, and TikTok stars. One Impression comes with OneDoctor, an AI tool that combines an intensive algorithm to determine the best influencers for a project. OneDoctor uses the data to ensure the highest reach for a brand. 

When we had a chat with Apaksh Gupta, Founder & CEO, One Impression, he said, 

“More often than not, influencers find themselves relying heavily on agencies to help them kick start their career, especially for financial services. Together with Decentro, we aim to transform the lives of many such influencers. With worries about financial services gone, our clients can focus more on new age content and grow swiftly.” 

Apaksh Gupta, Founder & CEO, One Impression

Refrens 

Refrens is a business network built as a bridge for freelancers, agencies, and businesses to connect with each other. This gig economy platform currently has over 50,000+ freelancers & agencies that cater to a wide range of services like development, IT services, marketing, design, and writing.

In addition, this gig marketplace also offers free invoicing, payments, and expense management systems for businesses & freelancers. 

By August 2020, Refrens says it had over 25,000 freelancers from 50 countries and has served businesses in 128 countries. 

When we had a chat with Naman Sarwagi, Co-founder at Refrens, here’s what he has to say about Refrens being a part of the gig economy revolution. 

“Refrens was started with the idea of helping freelancers find more work and then manage their client relations. We believe a freelance designer should be designing and not be worried about collecting payments, managing taxes, or be worried about where his next client will come from. There are 200Mn Freelancers and small agencies in the world, we are building for them.”

Naman Sarawagi, Co-founder at Refrens

Gigzoe 

GigZoe is a marketplace for small businesses to find and hire the perfect freelancer for their immediate gigs. The platform provides various services such as taxes, accounting, business registration, AI video animation, website development, e-commerce services, and content services. 

Getting started with Gigzoe is simple. In addition, the platform also enables small businesses to pay their gig workers in installments, thereby reducing their burden. There’s also a community where users can interact with each other, ask questions, and get their queries resolved. 

95% businesses struggle to outsource services. 70% of the offline contractual projects end in delivery conflicts. Gigzoe has built an end to end contractual hiring marketplace for both short term & long term projects and aims to be the biggest and most trusted B2B services marketplace & freelance talent company for Indian talent. Our vision & mission is to create economic opportunities for the independent talent and to empower businesses to start & grow their business by hiring from top pool of independent indian talent.

Ranu Gupta, Founder & CEO at Gigzoe

Truelancer 

Truelancer is a global marketplace for freelancers & businesses. The gig-powering platform enables a company to post its requirements, recruit freelancers & consultants, and get the job sorted. Truelancer is home to over 600,000+ freelance professionals. 

This platform comes with a Safe Deposit, where it collects funds from businesses and transfers it to users only after the final project has been approved & completed. Be it SEO experts, content writing, web development, design, or sales & marketing, Truelancer has it all. 

When we chatted with Dipesh Garg, CEO & Founder at Truelancer, here’s what he says. 

“Our mission is to help freelancers & SMEs find work wherever they are, connect with clients anywhere in the world, and get paid faster and more reliably. Our USP in India is that we are providing Remote Opportunities to freelancers to work with Large Enterprises.”

Dipesh Garg, CEO & Founder at Truelancer

qorner

qorner is India’s first app that empowers the creator economy to manage finances easily. It helps createpreneurs to focus on creating smashing content while juggling income from multiple sources under one roof. 

The qorner app has a special corner, a dashboard, where you can track all your earnings, monitor upcoming payments, share payment reminders, and raise invoices easily. The gig platform enables creators to move far away from the chaos of Excel Sheets that drains time and demands much effort. 

The qorner app is currently FREE for all users.

APIs For Gig Economy Businesses 

At Decentro, we’re happy to do our bit to catalyze this exponential growth of gig economy platforms in India. With our infrastructure layer in tandem with some of the best banking partners and licensed institutions in the country in the backend, we empower gig players in the following ways. 

Verify & Onboard Freelancers & Gig Workers with KYC

Verifying the identity of users before onboarding them to your platform is crucial to avoid fraud and losing a customer’s trust in your platform. To address this issue, your gig platform can leverage Decentro’s KYC APIs. A single endpoint for multiple documents such as PAN, Driving License, Aadhaar Card, and more to help you, onboard gig workers and hirers 95% faster!

If you need to run verifications on the companies that onboard as gig hirers, our CKYC submodule is always on standby!

Simplify Payment Collections & Payouts by 5X

One of the most crucial pain points faced by the majority of the companies out there is regarding payments. Are you making your customers wait for payment settlements? Or, levying payment gateway charges on them even for the simplest invoices? With Decentro, you can reduce the collection costs by 5X, and automate it for any recurring payments.

Streamline your payouts and avoid settlement delays with white-labeled UPI IDs. Take care of payment reconciliations and automate the process once and for all with virtual accounts. 

Extend Neobanking Services On Your Gig Platform

Provide neobanking services to your gig workers and freelancers through savings accounts and credit cards. You can either co-brand it or completely white-label it and, thus, reflect your brand’s identity naturally. Enable your gig workers to perform and avail of simple financial services on your platform, without hassle, with our neobanking module. Set up a smooth cash flow within your platform that enables your gig entrepreneurs to do their best and worry only about the things that matter.

Provide Lending & Credit Solutions

Provide credit to your gig hirers and help them when in need. Launch your custom Buy Now Pay Later solutions within weeks using our plug-and-play banking APIs. Assess the creditworthiness of your gig workers before giving them credit, from credit bureaus using our Credit Score Check submodule. Plug into Decentro’s lending ecosystem and enable instant loan approvals and same-day disbursals. 

A 2017 EY study found that 24% of the world’s gig workers come from India. Amidst the sea of potential, we’re happy to enable our customers, such as Workflexi and One Impression, to surf the gig wave, streamline payments for their customers, and operate 10X more efficiently!

We aren’t talking about waiting for months and burning a hole through your wallet for such a financial integration. Let us take care of it for you; go-live timelines within weeks, and that too at 90% reduced expenses. 

Intrigued? Here’s more about our APIs for gig platforms like yours!

Wish to get your gig platform listed on the blog? Drop us a ‘Hey’ at hello@decentro.tech. 

Until we see you next time!

Cheers!