India's Economic Survey 2025-26, tabled in Parliament this year, puts a concrete number on a trend that's been visible anecdotally for years: the country's gig workforce has grown to roughly 12 million workers in FY25, up from about 7.7 million in FY21 — a 55% increase in four years. Gig workers now make up roughly 2% of India's total workforce, with e-commerce the largest single employer, followed by logistics and BFSI (banking, financial services, and insurance).

Growth hasn't solved the pay problem

The same Survey flags a pay issue that's easy to lose in the growth headline: around 40% of gig workers earn below Rs 15,000 a month. That's prompted the Survey itself to recommend a minimum per-hour or per-task pay floor, alongside calls for portable social security, more algorithmic transparency from platforms, and platform co-investment in worker training and assets. In other words, the government's own economic analysis is flagging gig work's growth and its pay shortfalls as two sides of the same story, not separate issues.

Policy is starting to catch up

This year has also seen movement on the social security side. India's new labour codes extend formal social security coverage — life and disability cover, accident protection, health benefits, maternity support, and old-age protection — to gig and platform workers for the first time, funded through aggregator contributions. Workers generally need to register through the government's e-Shram portal to access these benefits, and eligibility is tied to minimum days of engagement with a given platform.

It's worth being clear about what this does and doesn't change: gig workers don't get automatic EPF (Employees' Provident Fund) coverage the way salaried employees do — this is a separate, scheme-based structure. Critics have also pointed out that the new framework doesn't directly address pay predictability or the degree of algorithmic control platforms exercise over workers' schedules and earnings, which has kept worker protests over pay and safety conditions ongoing through the year.

Quick commerce is doing a lot of the hiring

Quick commerce specifically has become a major driver of this growth. Hiring data from recruitment firms shows mid-level and white-collar hiring in the category — data analytics, product and tech roles, supply chain — up sharply year-on-year earlier in 2026, even as overall white-collar hiring in the category dipped slightly month-on-month. On the delivery side, industry estimates point to several lakh outdoor delivery partners already active, with Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Telangana leading as hiring states. Women remain a small share of this contractual workforce — reported at around 8% — and firms have reportedly started adding insurance and other retention benefits partly in response to a shortage of delivery partners relative to demand.

What this means if you're considering gig work

• Register on e-Shram if you do platform work. The new social security benefits are opt-in through registration, not automatic — if you haven't registered, you may be leaving coverage on the table.
• Treat the Rs 15,000/month figure as a floor to benchmark against, not a target. If a platform's effective pay after fuel, time, and vehicle costs puts you near or below that line, it's worth comparing against alternative platforms or shift patterns before committing full-time.
• Growth in gig hiring doesn't mean uniform opportunity across regions or genders. The concentration in a handful of states and the low share of women in contractual delivery roles both point to real gaps in how evenly this growth is distributed.