The 26-year-old food delivery worker from Patna, who did not wish to be named, said the pressure of customer reviews and long stays away from home took a severe emotional toll on him. After moving 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 the pressure of customers and I miss home a lot. I haven’t been home for over a year,” he said, adding that he supports his sisters and often has little or nothing left for himself after necessary expenses. He pays ₹2,000 a week to rent his e-bike and said his lack of alternative skills made it difficult for him to change careers. “After spending 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 struggling to make ends meet in metro cities.
Neeti Sharma, CEO, TeamLease Digital said, “The migrant worker now prefers to stay closer to home. For someone from Maharashtra, cities like Mysore or Nasik offer better job opportunities than Mumbai, even though the salary ₹6,000-10,000 less. Subway workers often end up saving little while staying far from family. The pressure on gig workers to adhere to tight schedules and bear the cost of any mistakes is rarely discussed. As more jobs are created in Tier 2 cities, gig workers are increasingly considering opportunities in those locations first.”
Finding a solution
Concerns about working conditions in the gig economy come as companies increasingly give employees access to mental health resources through therapists and counseling services as they look to boost productivity and save attrition.
Zomato set up a dedicated fitness and wellness center at its Gurugram headquarters in January 2025, employing 15 in-house professionals including mental health counselors to support its team. Meanwhile, Reliance Industries has expanded its R-Swasthya ‘integrated wellbeing’ program in 2024-25 and certified select employees as ‘mental health first responders’ to provide immediate psychological support to their colleagues at various locations.
The Economic Survey looked at what it called the “social drivers of retention” and cited a study by the Good Business Lab, a global nonprofit that uses research to demonstrate the economic benefits of investing in worker well-being. The study, conducted in Bengaluru between January 2023 and December 2024, saw newly arrived female migrant workers paired with experienced peers or “buddies” who spoke the same language and shared a similar background. Older workers were trained in basic cognitive behavioral techniques to provide “emotional first aid” and help newcomers navigate work and community life.
The study showed that the intervention resulted in a 5.3% decrease in anxiety and a 5.9% decrease in depression among new workers. Productivity increased by 6.4% among migrants who received peer support, while older friends themselves saw a 12% increase, showing that strong social ties reduce anxiety, loneliness and depression, improving workers’ ability to adapt, engage and stay in work.
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, of whom 429 were gig workers. The study found that gig workers reported poorer mental health and lower life satisfaction than full- and part-time workers, but better outcomes than the unemployed. Mediation analysis showed that these differences were explained by higher levels of loneliness and financial insecurity among gig workers and that the informal gig economy lacked the latent psychosocial benefits of employment, such as stable social networks, which 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 casual workers.
India’s gig workforce has grown by 55% in four years, from 7.7 million workers in FY21 to around 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 work is projected to increase to 6.7% by 2029–30, contributing an estimated ₹2.35 trillion gross domestic product. E-commerce and logistics companies remain the largest employers, employing about 3.7 million and 1.5 million workers in the gig economy.
The Economic Survey also highlighted sharp segmentation within the industry based on skills, estimating that by 2030 high-skilled workers will make up 27.5% of the gig workforce, while low-skilled workers will make up around 33.8% and medium-skilled workers 38.7%.
Algorithmic misery
The survey pointed to myriad difficulties in platform-based work. About 40% of gig workers earn less than ₹15,000 a month, he said, while algorithm-driven systems increasingly control work allocation, performance monitoring, wages and matching supply and demand, raising concerns about burnout and income fluctuations.
The pressure to meet targets peaks during the holiday season from September to December, when companies hire large numbers of additional temporary workers to meet increased demand. Summer is in second place in terms of demand, when companies again hire dozens of part-timers for three to six months from March.
Shaik Salauddin, co-founder and national general secretary of the App-based Transport Workers Federation of India, said gig workers are facing increasing physical and mental stress as they work long hours for low pay while remaining dependent on customer reviews that directly affect their earnings and continued access to platforms. “They’re forced to beg customers for a rating, if the score goes down, their income suffers and there’s always the fear of deactivation,” he said.
He added that workers live in constant anxiety about blocking identity cards, loan repayments and household expenses, which is often linked to discrimination in housing associations, where many are denied access to lifts after hours on the road. “It’s not just physical exhaustion from traveling all day. There is constant mental pressure, insecurity about earnings, fear of account suspension and the responsibility of leading families,” he said, adding that extreme summer heat, frequent abuse of customers due to delayed deliveries and heavy air pollution in cities like Delhi further worsen conditions for gig workers.
