78% of India’s delivery gig workers earn less than 2.5 lakh a year: Report

Aug 24, 2024 01:07 PM IST

The survey report titled ‘Understanding the Financial literacy of gig delivery partners,’ covered more than 2,000 such workers of Zomato, Swiggy, Uber, and Amazon across 40 Indian cities, assessing multiple aspects of their financial situation.

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How many gig workers filed ITR?

• Close to 61% of the participants admitted to not being aware of income tax brackets.
• Only 33.5% of the surveyed gig workers filed income tax returns (ITRs), which means 66.5% haven’t done so.
• Among those who filed ITRs, 66% filed zero returns.

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A more interesting aspect is that only 42% of the respondents not filing ITRs showed willingness to pay taxes at all if they fell into a tax bracket, and shockingly 58% said they were unwilling to pay taxes even if they have to.

How do gig workers save?

Only 24% of gig workers invested in Public Provident Fund (PPF), generally contributing between ₹1,000 and ₹3,000 per month.

How do gig workers invest?

Only 23% invested in mutual funds, and among those, 71% invested between ₹500 and ₹1,000 monthly.

Around 26% invest directly in the stock market, with nearly half preferring blue-chip stocks and others going for IPOs or penny stocks.

How many gig workers have life insurance?

62% of the surveyed gig workers did not have life insurance.

How do gig workers compare with the rest?

Out of the 74 million who filed income tax for the financial year 2022-23, 70% claimed not to have tax incidence, meaning that only about 1.6% of India’s population actually paid income tax.

India currently has 7 million gig workers, with the number expected to reach 25 million by 2030, according to the report, which cited Niti Aayog estimates.

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