The Ministry of Labour and Employment has invited platform aggregator to register their gig workers on the e-Shram portal. The gig economy is booming in India. Social security benefits for gig workers had been long pending demand of the Gig economy.  The decision was welcomed by the Gig Workers Association. They have also urged the government to extend the social security net to structured benefits like Employee State Insurances (ESI) and Provident Fund (PF). They proposed that the costs of these benefits be shared among gig workers, aggregators and the government.

E-shram portal is the centralized database of all unorganized worker. It was launched on 26^th August 2021. The objective of the portal was to help the unorganized sector by providing opportunities for skilling, finding jobs and checking their eligibility for different social sector schemes.

To help with the onboarding of aggregators on the e-Shram portal, the ministry has issued Standard Operating Procedures. The aggregator will register through a registration form, there will be an Aadhar based eKYC, on successful verification an Acknowledgement ID. For any assistance a helpline number 14434 had been provided. Under the new system, platform workers will receive a Universal Account Number, granting them access to essential security benefits.

India has 7.7 million gig workers. A NITI Aayog report estimated that the number of gig workers in India will rise to 23.5 million by 2029-30. Most delivery executives are from a lower-income background. Thus, extending the social security benefit will have a great impact on-demand workforce. However, the premise of the whole gig economy is that it is temporary job. Madhav Krishna, CEO and founder of delivery hiring platform Vahan cautioned that adding structured benefits like PF and ESI will defeat the benefit of employing contractual labour. Platforms will suffer an extra burden and might not remain profitable. They might increase the delivery charges, and this might hurt the customer base.