{"id":89169,"date":"2023-08-04T09:11:26","date_gmt":"2023-08-04T09:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/04\/urban-company-lured-women-into-the-gig-economy-then-pushed-them-out-wired\/"},"modified":"2023-08-04T09:11:26","modified_gmt":"2023-08-04T09:11:26","slug":"urban-company-lured-women-into-the-gig-economy-then-pushed-them-out-wired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/04\/urban-company-lured-women-into-the-gig-economy-then-pushed-them-out-wired\/","title":{"rendered":"Urban Company Lured Women Into the Gig Economy\u2014Then Pushed Them Out | WIRED"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paywall\">But when this doesn\u2019t happen, companies desperately rework their models. When they need to curb spending, or when they struggle to raise new funding, marketing is the first thing they cut. Demand drops, creating an oversupply of workers on the platform. \u201cAnd the excessive supply on the platforms feels the pinch. That\u2019s the typical cycle with a two-sided marketplace,\u201d Doshi says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">On July 10, Urban Company CEO Abhiraj Bahl released a video to the company\u2019s workers explaining the new strict policies. He said that each year, 45 percent of customers use the platform just once and don\u2019t make a second booking, while 15 to 20 percent of workers leave. \u201cAnd as a result of all of this, Urban Company is still a loss-making company,\u201d he said in the video, part of which has been viewed by WIRED. \u201cSo we are losing customers and we are also losing money.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">He blamed the decline in customers on \u201cpoor quality service\u201d and \u201coff-platform jobs\u201d\u2014that is, workers making private arrangements with clients and taking their work off Urban Company, something that\u2019s a serious risk to the company\u2019s model. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of an existential question: They need the workers and the customers to stay on their platform in order to remain an intermediary,\u201d says Ambika Tandon, a tech and labor researcher at the Center for Internet and Society think tank.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">All of this has led the company to push its workers into a mold that essentially has all the downsides of regular employment but few of the benefits. For workers who joined the platform for its flexibility and autonomy, this reality of platform work becomes difficult to reconcile with.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cUrban Company is trying to imagine an ideal worker for this particular model to be someone who is always available, gives their 100 percent, [doesn\u2019t] cancel at all, has no family responsibilities,\u201d Tandon says. \u201cBut a lot of these workers are single parents, who have family responsibility and children to take care of. These are not folks who will fit into this model of having a 80 percent, 90 percent acceptance rate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\"><span class=\"lead-in-text-callout\">In June, WhatsApp<\/span> groups used by Urban Company workers were flooded with messages about one of their peers, who had reportedly died by suicide after the company deactivated her account\u2014leaving her with no source of income. Several workers I spoke with said that while the news was shocking, none of them knew the victim. \u201cWe were vexed,\u201d Seema from Bengaluru says, \u201cBut the problem is that all of us are so isolated from each other. The platform doesn\u2019t have any get-togethers, nothing. We all don\u2019t have any relationships, which is a plus point for Urban Company.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">But, like their peers across the platform economy, Urban Company workers are now getting organized. In June and July, hundreds of Urban Company workers took to the streets in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, and Kolkata. Shabnam was present at one of the protests last month in Bengaluru, demanding that the company reinstate her account. With this, they have joined thousands of Indian gig workers from Uber, Ola, Swiggy, Blinkit and more.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>But when this doesn\u2019t happen, companies desperately rework their models. When they need to curb spending, or when they struggle to raise new funding, marketing is the first thing they cut. Demand drops, creating an oversupply of workers on the platform. \u201cAnd the excessive supply on the platforms feels the pinch. That\u2019s the typical cycle [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Urban Company Lured Women Into the Gig Economy\u2014Then Pushed Them Out | WIRED - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/04\/urban-company-lured-women-into-the-gig-economy-then-pushed-them-out-wired\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Urban Company Lured Women Into the Gig Economy\u2014Then Pushed Them Out | WIRED - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"But when this doesn\u2019t happen, companies desperately rework their models. 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