Gig economy has really boosted up, many corporates are relying on it

At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the job landscape, gig employment is gaining ground and is offering huge potential for both blue-collar as well as white-collar workers, according to experts. Gig workers are independent contractual workers who are into flexible agreements with companies or through platforms for on-demand work completion. In a gig economy, temporary, flexible jobs are preferred by companies rather than hiring full-time employees.

Experts believe that the gig economy provides a win-win situation for both parties and its reach is slowly expanding from less-skilled services to high-skilled jobs.

According to TeamLease.com, a group company of TeamLease Services, the demand for gig workers is higher this year than last year.

While delivery agents command the biggest slice of the pie, the other profiles which are in demand include warehouse helpers and assembly line operators.

In white-collar gigs, designers, content writers and digital marketers are in demand as e-commerce sites require increased activity, Banerjee said.

GigIndia co-founder and CEO Sahil Sharma said, "We have noticed that companies have now started shifting full-time entry-level roles to a gig model. We at GigIndia have uploaded around 3,500-plus job opportunities for giggers on our platform within six months."

There has been a 115 per cent increase in work-from-home gigs during the lockdown and the percentage of women giggers grew from 12.07 per cent to 29.34 per cent within six months of the pre/post-lockdown period, Sharma said.

However, in the absence of a steady salary, paid sick leave and other benefits, the chances of financial insecurity are much higher.

According to Abhay Mathur, Senior Vice President, Finance, Urban Company, "a flexible workforce helps organisations manage costs well with the peaks and troughs of demand. It also enables rapid scale up when exponential growth happens and helps provide specialist skills for one time/occasional use."

For workers, the benefit is the flexibility to work when you want and on the jobs you want, across geographies (where possible), he added.