UBERISATION OF WORK

Are you looking forward to working in an economy driven by freedom and flexibility? Are
you dreaming of freelancing but still being able to operate as an entrepreneur? Well, then
gig the way forward. The disruptive attitude of the millenials has led to the need for
uberisation.

In the prevailing conditions of the global market, work and the workplace are witnessing a
revolution due to the changing preference of the young working class and also their
inclination towards the ‘gig economy’. To quote, Airbnb has gathered the same number of
hotel rooms as Hilton Hotels amassed in over 90 years in business. Similarly, Uber is the
world’s largest taxi company, but does not own any cars! The effect of such Uberisation can
be seen on the giants in the industry, as Infosys and wipro are considering exploring the idea
of uberised workforce which is spreading like wildfire

‘Uberisation’ or the app-driven labor market where talent works on a demand-supply model
moving across projects and organisations as per the demand and their interest areas, is a
new catchphrase that can change the employment scenario gradually over the coming the
years.Thinking about Spotify, Netflix and Airbnb Each follows the same business model and
taps into global demand and wide diversity.

With this on-demand model, the era of no ownership has also emerged. Mobility-as-a-
Service (MaaS) is a model for traffic without ownership. For example, we pay a monthly fee
for Spotify, we tell the app where we are going and get instant access to Ubers, buses, and
so on. Everything is available just in time and ownership is no longer needed. This model
leads to creation of new industries and a host of opportunities to entrepreneurs. The clear
purpose is to bring about a shift from when work used to be a place to go to, to making it a
series of tasks to be carried out remotely via “the cloud”. Combining real-time data, mobile
payments, instant gratification and dynamic pricing, this emerging model is still in its infancy
but is growing quicker than expected.

While Uberisation of workforce caters to the millennials, it is also a cost saving technique for
companies and empowers them to compete in an ever-shifting tech scenario. In this ever-
changing and challenging environment, Uberisation is being taken into consideration by
employers all over the world and can become a preferred strategy for the Indian companies.
Large government-aided agencies like NASA have taken to hiring part time, flexible workers
for ambitious space projects. In India, the Union government hired freelancers to digitisation
of documents as part of the Digital India initiative.

Gig economy is being adopted across generations, is gathering high value gigs and is not just
limited to the services sector. It has arrived and is here to stay.