For generations, Indian households have relied on an informal army of domestic workers to keep homes running. These workers mop floors, wash dishes, cook meals, fold laundry and handle countless other daily chores. The sector employs an estimated 30 million people, the vast majority of them women who migrate from rural areas to cities in search of work. Arrangements have traditionally been struck through neighbourhood networks, personal recommendations or agents, with pay often settled in cash and conditions left largely unregulated. Low wages, long or unpredictable hours, and vulnerability to exploitation have long defined the work.
That model is now undergoing a significant shift. A growing number of tech startups are bringing domestic help into the on-demand economy, allowing customers to book trained workers through smartphone apps for short tasks, sometimes within minutes. Platforms such as Snabbit, Pronto and Urban Company operate much like ride-hailing services. Workers receive job notifications on their phones, travel to assigned homes, clock in digitally and complete specific chores. Performance is measured through customer ratings, and algorithms generate incentives or penalties based on those scores.
At a Snabbit training hub in Bengaluru, women practise everyday tasks against the clock. They fold bedsheets, chop vegetables and rehearse the precise, efficient movements expected on the job. Soft-skills sessions teach them how to present themselves—tying hair neatly, greeting customers politely and maintaining professional demeanour. Before they begin work, most undergo background checks that include police verification. The goal, according to the companies, is to introduce structure, standardisation and accountability into a sector that has operated almost entirely informally.
For some workers, the change has brought tangible gains. Heena Bibi, a 34-year-old mother of four, says working through a company is better than the traditional system. She now earns around ₹45,000 a month—roughly three times what she typically made juggling up to four households under informal arrangements. On a normal day she handles three or four jobs; during festivals demand rises further. “Doing the same work with a company is good,” she said. Flexibility is another draw. Snabbit founder and chief executive Aayush Agarwal points out that many women can fit work around family responsibilities. “Today a mother can send her kid off to school, work at Snabbit for four hours and come back before the kid comes back from school,” he told reporters. “It is an opportunity that these women see in a very positive light.”
Snabbit currently operates in ten cities, including Delhi and Mumbai, with about 20,000 registered workers completing an average of 60,000 jobs each day. Pronto markets hourly services ranging from routine cleaning to specialised tasks such as window cleaning or “after-party express clean-ups.” Urban Company, already established in broader home services including repairs and beauty treatments, has expanded its on-demand domestic offerings as well. Customers appreciate the convenience. Homemaker Atiya Khusro, 63, said she prefers booking help online because it removes the rigid schedules that forced her to organise her day around a regular worker’s availability. “With instant helps there is no such issue,” she explained.
Yet the transition is far from seamless, and not every worker is eager to join. Renu Devi, a 38-year-old helper from Uttar Pradesh, remains cautious. She prefers the traditional system because she knows the families she works for and feels safer in familiar homes. “I am scared that I might have to go to a house where I don’t know if I will be safe,” she said. “At the moment, I know the people who I work for and I can trust them.” Her concerns reflect deeper issues of safety and trust that have always surrounded domestic work performed inside private residences.
Labour advocates raise sharper criticisms. Sanjay Gaba, president of the All India Gig and Platform Workers Union, argues that the app model simply replaces one form of insecurity with another. “The app system is 100 percent unfair,” he said. “They don’t have any job security. They don’t have benefits like pension because they are not permanent employees.” Workers on these platforms are typically treated as independent contractors rather than salaried employees. Earnings can fluctuate with demand, ratings and penalties for cancellations, delays or low scores. Some workers report that late arrivals caused by traffic or building security checks can result in deductions, even when the delay is outside their control. Ratings carry heavy weight: a score below four out of five often triggers a call from the training team to diagnose the problem, and consistently low ratings can reduce future bookings.
The pressures of algorithmic management are not unique to domestic work. India’s gig economy—already familiar through ride-hailing and food-delivery platforms—has long sparked debate about flexibility versus precarity. Instant home-help services intensify some of those tensions because the work takes place inside private homes, where boundaries between employer and worker have historically been informal and sometimes exploitative. Companies insist they are formalising the sector through training, digital payments, background verification and, in some cases, insurance coverage. Industry leaders maintain that the platforms expand options rather than fully displace traditional arrangements. Agarwal has said his ambition is to replicate the transformation that ride-hailing brought to urban transport: “Whether it’s a Sunday morning… (or) a festival, you should open the app and be able to see a slot and be able to book.”
The scale of the opportunity is substantial. India’s home-cleaning and domestic services market is large, with tens of millions of urban households already outsourcing housework in some form. Rising dual-income households, nuclear families and a growing middle class have increased demand for reliable, flexible help. At the same time, the informal nature of traditional domestic work has left many workers without social security, formal contracts or clear grievance mechanisms. Platforms promise greater transparency and higher potential earnings for those who can meet the performance metrics. For many women with limited formal education or other job options, the chance to earn more while retaining some control over hours is genuinely attractive.
Still, questions remain about long-term sustainability and fairness. Will the higher pay seen by early adopters like Heena Bibi hold as competition increases and subsidies or introductory pricing fade? How effectively can platforms protect workers who encounter difficult or unsafe situations inside customers’ homes? Will algorithmic rating systems create new forms of surveillance and stress that offset the gains in flexibility? And what happens to the large number of workers who prefer the relative predictability and personal relationships of traditional arrangements?
For now, the two systems coexist. Many households continue to employ regular domestic workers for daily routines while turning to apps for emergencies, one-off deep cleans or times when their usual help is unavailable. Workers, too, sometimes mix both models. The digitisation of domestic labour is still in its early stages, yet the direction is clear. What was once organised almost entirely through personal networks and informal agreements is increasingly mediated by smartphones, ratings and algorithms.
India’s domestic workers are going online because demand for instant, reliable household services is rising and because technology makes matching supply and demand far more efficient. Whether this shift ultimately improves livelihoods and working conditions will depend on how platforms, regulators and worker organisations address the persistent issues of security, benefits and bargaining power. The informal army that once operated in the shadows of neighbourhoods is logging in. The sector is changing, and the outcome will shape the daily lives of millions of workers and the households that rely on them.
About The Author
