It’s almost impossible to imagine our current lifestyles without gig workers. Getting food delivered at midnight, receiving parcel at the doorstep, or calling for a cab at the last minute for a meeting has become routine for most of us. Just tap a couple of times on the smartphone and, voila, a person is standing at your door for your service. Today, India has close to a million gig workers (McKinsey data) delivering food, groceries, medicines, parcels, etc., from one place to another. Majority of them use conventional ICE two-wheelers to provide these services and it’s not uncommon for most of them to travel 100 km every day. With fuel price rising by the day, it is burning a hole in their pockets. A growing number of gig delivery workers are using bicycles as well, peddling 50-60 km every day in the scorching heat to deliver your packets and earn a living and meet expenses on their health as well.

With increasing fuel prices and inability to earn more on bicycles, EVs have become a go-to option for many gig workers. With more companies offering EV rentals, the accessibility and affordability of EVs have also increased in the last 1-2 years, opening employment opportunities for many new entrants in the gig economy. It is estimated that platform-based gig deliveries will employ six million by 2025, a 6x number from today. EVs are going to be their preferred mode of commute considering the low cost per km, ease of riding and low maintenance.

Earning more

Gig delivery workers in Delhi have already started using e-bikes and have been able to increase their net take-home incomes by up to a 2X. Dinesh, a Zomato Delivery Partner, used to earn ₹9,000/month operating in South Delhi on a bicycle, cycling for 12 hours and covering 60 km a day. Now he uses an e-scooter and can easily take home ₹17,000/month.

Another Partner Sanjay, who used to make ₹15,000/month on his Activa, is now taking home ₹18,000/month by using e-scooters.

With Delhi Government in the process of issuing an EV policy for gig delivery platforms to shift to EVs, it’s going to push more gig workers into using EVs. This will not only improve their income but also help avoid polluting the environment. Thanks to the ease of riding, EVs can help gig workers log more kilometres than they can on conventional bikes. There are now companies innovating on the ergonomics as well, which will help gig worker travel more without hurting their physical health.

However, there are still some challenges in making EVs mainstream for gig workers, the biggest one being Tier 1 auto OEMs focussing on premium electric scooters. Owing to this, gig workers are still not able to get the right product offerings for themselves. They need vehicles which can offer high range (more than 120 km) without being capex intensive, and with no charging or maintenance issues — even a single hour of downtime can affect their daily income. A product/service of such specific requirements just cannot be patched-up from multiple vendors. This is a challenge for many companies in this space, as they are not capable of building a vertically integrated tech stack. There are some start-ups in the ecosystem trying to cater to this problem by building ‘Vehicle to Energy to Software’ platforms, but they are yet to reach scale to prove their models.

With the Battery Swapping Policy in Budget 2022, the private sector is motivated to build innovative models around ‘battery as a service’ to reduce the high capex for EVs. Quite a few companies have announced mass deployment of their swapping infrastructure in India. This might be a gamechanger for the domestic EV ecosystem and can also fulfil some or all the requirements for the mass adoption of EVs by gig delivery workers.

The writer is Co-Founder and CEO of Baaz

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