Urban Company, Zomato, Blinkit & Uncle Delivery register on e-Shram portal; aid gov move for social security to gig workers
Four leading aggregators — Urban Company, Zomato, Blinkit and Uncle Delivery — have registered on the e-Shram portal, joining an initiative of the Ministry of Labour and Employment to register themselves and their gig employees for availing social security benefits.
The Ministry had last year rolled out a pilot project for registering platform workers and aggregators on the e-Shram portal which was also meant to formalise the gig economy spread across sectors of e-commerce, transportation and delivery services.
An aggregator module too has been piloted enabling digital platforms to onboard themselves and their workforce onto India’s national database for unorganised workers.
The Ministry’s move was also captured in the Budget 2025. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her Budget speech in parliament on Saturday announced that 1 crore gig workers will get access to healthcare under PM Jan Arogya Yojana. She also spoke of measures to facilitate their identification through unique identity cards and streamlining their registration on the e-Shram portal.
80 per cent higher
The Union Budget allocated a record ₹32,646 crore for the Ministry of Labour & Employment in FY 25-26—the highest ever and almost 80 per cent higher than last year’s revised estimates. Mansukh Mandaviya, the Minister for Labour and Employment, said, “I thank Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi Ji for this historic budget which is the highest ever and almost 80 per cent higher than last year’s revised estimates.”
“Our focus is firmly on the newly announced Employment Generation Scheme (ELI), for which the budgetary allocation has been doubled from ₹10,000 crore to ₹20,000 crore. The allocation under the Employees’ Pension Scheme has been increased by ₹300 crore and under the PM Shram Yogi Maandhan Yojana by 37 per cent compared to last year,” Mandaviya added to share the fine-print of allocation to his Ministry.
1 crore workers to benefit
He also stated that the gig workforce is a vital pillar of India’s new-age economy, driving innovation and efficiency across digital platforms. “Recognising their contribution, the government’s decision to provide them with identity cards, e-Shram registration and healthcare security under PM Jan Arogya Yojana is a transformative step towards their social security and well-being. This initiative will empower nearly 1 crore gig workers,” Mandaviya observed. “Beyond this, the government remains committed to extending social security benefits to workers in other unorganised sectors as well, ensuring dignity, security and prosperity for every worker in the country,” said the Minister.
India’s gig and platform economy has witnessed rapid expansion, with NITI Aayog’s report ‘India’s Booming Gig and Platform Economy’ projecting that the workforce in this sector will cross 1 crore in 2024-25 and grow to 2.35 crore by 2029-30.
One of the four labour codes — Code on Social Security, 2020 (CoSS, 2020) — for the first time defined ‘aggregator’, ‘gig worker’ and ‘platform worker’ and introduced legal provisions for gig and platform workers, ensuring their inclusion in social security measures. The codes are still to be implemented.
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