A 26-year-old food delivery worker from Patna, who did not wish to be named, said the pressure of customer ratings and long stints away from home had taken a heavy emotional toll on him. Having moved to Delhi five months ago for work after a stint in Gujarat, he said loneliness has become his constant companion.
“I feel anxious because of customer pressure and I miss home very much. I haven’t gone back home for over a year," he said, adding that he supports his sisters and is often left with little or nothing for himself after essential expenses. He pays ₹2,000 a week to rent his electric bike and said the lack of alternative skills makes it hard for him to change professions. “After spending on everything, there is nothing left in my hands," he said.
His story mirrors the lives of many of India’s more than 12 million gig workers who struggle to make ends meet in metro cities.
Neeti Sharma, chief executive of TeamLease Digital, said, "The migrant worker now prefers to stay closer to home. For someone from Maharashtra, cities such as Mysore or Nasik offer better work opportunities than Mumbai, even if the pay is ₹6,000-10,000 less. Workers in metros often end up saving little while staying far from family. The pressures on gig workers to meet strict schedules and bear the cost of any mistakes are rarely discussed. With more jobs emerging in tier-2 cities, gig workers are increasingly likely to consider opportunities in these places first."
Searching for solutions
The concern over working conditions in the gig economy comes at a time when companies are increasingly providing employees access to mental health resources through therapists and counselling services as they look to boost productivity and rescue attrition.
Zomato set up a dedicated fitness and wellness centre at its Gurugram headquarters in January 2025, employing 15 in-house professionals including mental health counsellors to support its team. Reliance Industries meanwhile expanded its R-Swasthya ‘integrated wellbeing’ program in 2024-25, certifying selected employees as ‘mental health first aiders’ to provide immediate psychological support to their peers across various sites.
Addressing what it termed the “social drivers of retention", the Economic Survey cited a study conducted by Good Business Lab, a global non-profit that uses research to prove the economic benefits of investing in worker well-being. The study, conducted in Bengaluru between January 2023 and December 2024, saw newly arrived migrant women workers paired with experienced peers or “buddies" who spoke the same language and shared similar backgrounds. Senior workers were trained in basic cognitive behavioural techniques to provide ‘emotional first-aid’ and help newcomers navigate work and community life.
The intervention led to a 5.3% reduction in anxiety and a 5.9% drop in depression among new workers, the study showed. Productivity rose 6.4% among migrants who received peer support, while senior buddies themselves recorded a 12% increase, showing that strong social connections reduced anxiety, loneliness and depression, improving workers’ ability to adapt, engage and remain employed.
A similar study was conducted in 2022 by researchers Senhu Wang (National University of Singapore), Lambert Zixin Li (Stanford University) and Adam Coutts (University of Cambridge), using data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2019–21) to examine the mental health and life satisfaction of gig workers during the covid pandemic.
The nationally representative sample included 17,722 British adults, 429 of whom were gig workers. The study found that gig workers reported worse mental health and lower life satisfaction than full-time and part-time employees, but better outcomes than the unemployed. The mediation analysis showed these differences were explained by higher levels of self-reported loneliness and financial precarity among gig workers, and that the informal gig economy lacked the latent psychosocial benefits of employment, such as stable social networks that are important for psychological well-being.
The authors of the research concluded that public policies should focus on providing social support to reduce loneliness and improve psychological well-being among freelance and contingent workers.
India’s gig workforce has grown 55% in four years, from 7.7 million workers in FY21 to about 12 million in FY25, and now accounts for more than 2% of the country’s total workforce. The share of gig workers in non-agricultural employment is projected to rise to 6.7% by 2029-30, contributing an estimated ₹2.35 trillion to gross domestic product. E-commerce and logistics companies remain the largest employers, in the gig economy engaging about 3.7 million and 1.5 million workers, respectively.
The Economic Survey also highlighted sharp skill-based segmentation within the sector, estimating that by 2030, high-skilled workers would make up 27.5% of the gig workforce, while low-skilled workers would account for around 33.8% and medium-skilled workers 38.7%.
Algorithmic misery
The survey highlighted myriad difficulties in platform-based work. About 40% of gig workers earn less than ₹15,000 a month, it said, while algorithm-driven systems increasingly control work allocation, performance monitoring, wages and supply-demand matching, raising concerns around burnout and income volatility.
The pressure to meet targets peaks during the festive season from September-December, when companies hire large numbers of additional temporary gig workers to meet the increased demand. Summer comes second in terms of demand, when companies once again hire scores of temporary workers for three to six months starting from March.
Shaik Salauddin, co-founder and national general secretary of the Indian Federation of App-Based Transport Workers, said gig workers face mounting physical and mental stress as they work long hours for low pay while remaining dependent on customer ratings that directly affect their earnings and continued access to platforms. “They are forced to beg customers for ratings if the score drops, their income suffers, and there is always the fear of deactivation," he said.
He added that workers live with constant anxiety about ID blocks, loan repayments and household expenses, which is often compounded by discrimination in housing societies where many are denied access to lifts after spending hours on the road. “It’s not just physical exhaustion from travelling all day. There is continuous mental pressure, earnings uncertainty, fear of account suspension, and the responsibility of running families," he said, adding that extreme summer heat, frequent customer abuse over delayed deliveries, and severe air pollution in cities such as Delhi are further worsening conditions for gig workers.
