Every platform begins with a promise. The earliest online marketplaces—from classifieds to today’s gig economy super-apps—sold the same idea: with enough code, you could scale supply and demand, eliminate inefficiency, and create value out of chaos.
For a while, it worked. The numbers went up. The charts looked right. Capital pivoted to fund their extravagant, high-burn strategies.
But here’s what the pitch decks don’t show you: In India’s gig economy, worker churn runs between 40–60% annually. That’s not a bug. It’s a feature—of systems that treat human movement like packet routing.
The more profound truth—one that India is learning as its platform economy enters its next act—is this: platforms are inherently brittle.
They thrive on the margins of what’s easy: matching, routing, and extracting a small fee from a large volume of transactions. But the moment the supply chain becomes human, every shortcut gets exposed.
The Real Cost of Migration
Behind the app interface lies a world of informality, fragmentation, and risk. This isn’t just inconvenient; it’s expensive. Studies estimate the friction of migration—job search, housing gaps, and wage delays—can cost a worker up to two months of income per year.
Last month, I met a delivery worker in Bengaluru. He cycled through three jobs in six weeks. All three platforms promised "guaranteed earnings." None delivered.
- Unclear payouts
- Penalties he didn’t understand
- No accommodation support
- A new app to learn every time
The platforms counted him as three new user acquisitions. He counted it as three failures.
Platforms Don’t Build Infrastructure—They Route Through It
Platforms don’t own the infrastructure that enables human movement. They simply route people and transactions through existing, broken systems.
When 100 million Indians migrate for work each year, they don’t need another app. They need what the platforms can’t give them:
- Standardized onboarding
- Reliable housing
- Portable benefits
- A system that treats them as people, not profiles
Infrastructure isn't glamorous. But it endures.
From Global Platforms to Local Failures
This is not just an Indian problem. Global platforms face the same limits of the asset-light model:
- Uber took 14 years to become profitable. Only after it moved into logistics infrastructure.
- Amazon abandoned its pure marketplace thesis. It had to own warehouses to survive.
- The takeaway: You can’t scale reliably without owning the rails.
The Future: Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS)
India’s next decade won’t be defined by which platform moves the most people fastest—but who builds the backbone.
This is the shift. This is IAAS: Infrastructure as a Service.
Imagine this:
A migrant arrives in a new city to find a pre-vetted room.
Her skills are verified.
Her work history and benefits travel with her.
She plugs into a network—not chaos.
We stop just routing demand.
We start constructing the channels that make demand flow reliably and safely.
The Market Is Moving
You don’t have to imagine it. It’s happening now.
- Smart money is moving from apps to infrastructure
- Enterprises are done with 50% churn rates
- Workers are done downloading their 7th job app this year
- Investors want end-to-end systems—not user acquisition gimmicks
What I’m Tracking This Week
The Tamil Nadu government’s new migrant worker database—a first step toward boring infrastructure that actually works.
This isn’t commentary.
It’s documentation.
Built while building.
Written while working.
No performative outrage. Just the reality we’re standing in.
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I share real-time insights from India’s infrastructure revolution:
From worker dormitories to policy boardrooms.
From onboarding centers to construction sites.
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