Platform Strategies for Workforce Management in India: On-demand platforms
Aditi Surie researches and teaches at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements. Surie works to decode the emerging ‘future of work’ for Indian cities shaped by platform technologies. Rooting questions of platform newness and disruption in the realities of Indian cities helps propel more empirically honest ways of projecting futures created by technology. This perspective can overpower any company-led or investor-led idea of the future. This web resource has benefited significantly from the work of Krishna Akhil Kumar Adavi who is a researcher at IIHS. He was a part of the founding team at TapChief, a platform for enterprises to work with solopreneurs and open talent for gigs in content and design.
We hope that this microsite and our dataset will help you look at answering some big, looming questions for economic development, and how labour of the future will be seen. While these intersections can be made for many things, city specific questions can help localize these mega-imaginations. Share our curiosities on the following questions:
What are digital platforms?
How are interdisciplinary areas of research on cities related to innovative technologies like digital platforms?
How do we build out the relationship between wicked issues of urban sustainability and innovative technology like platforms in the Global South?
How do patterns of regional economic development impact digital platforms?
Do innovative technologies have a role to play in newly developing fields of knowledge like urban sciences?
If you want to speak to us, get in in touch on Twitter: @sosurie, @paranoidhydroid
or on email asurie at iihs dot ac dot in
Share your thoughts on platform strategies!
How can this resource be used?
For Journalists
Use this microsite to think deeper about the industry you report on, the city you see changing in front of you because of technology.
For Researchers
Engage in our research questions, our detailed list of platforms, and contribute towards a fuller portfolio around cities and the impact of digital platforms.
For Students
Use this microsite to base your observations about your physical and digital surroundings, as a way to understand that not all platforms are built the same. Let us inspire new research and questions in your mind!
We encourage you to use our questions, build on them and add to them by engaging with them! We have made a conscious effort to make this data set available to inspire new research or questions. Cite it! This is part of the doctoral work of Aditi Surie, we ask that you cite it when you use it!
Suggested reference for this microsite is:
Surie, Aditi (2020). “Platform Strategies for Workforce Management in India: On-demand platforms”. Tacit Urban Research Network.
This microsite sets up some basic knowledge that anyone studying or writing about a platform company would find useful. The "Companies Data" page is a database we have generated through interviewing platform firms in India. Clicking on any company opens up a page that gives you an overview of their platform labour strategy. The "FAQs on Digital Labour" section is an overview of the contemporary debates in the understanding of platform firms and digital labour. The "Reading Lists" are a set of reports, books and journal publications from Management studies, Information Studies and Labour Studies on the platform economy.
If you would like to stay up-to-date on our work on digital labour, please leave your email address below. We will write to you whenever there are important updates and developments. Your personal information will not be shared with any third party.