How to make money by doing small errands – Service Networking

If you are at home and want to make some money by doing some small tasks there are many options available – especially you have a computer and internet connection available. This life hacker post explains various options. In addition to online tasks there is an interesting startup called Taskrabbit which is basically trying to tap the unorganized labor pool to complete some of our day to day errands.  

This is just a 3 step process: You post a task first. Then there are folks pre screened by Task rabbit who would be allotted to complete your task. Once your task is completed you pay them for the task based on the upper limit you have set for the task. A small % of the the amount goes to the company running this as a service fee.

Pretty neat business model right? Organize the unorganized labor pool.  Though this looks like a simple concierge service, the only difference is in a concierge service you don’t need to be a fulltime employee of these companies to do these tasks. This is a pretty easy part time business – this is a social approach to solve the problem of completing day to day errands. They call this as a Service networking. Leveraging Internet, Mobile communication & social media to aggregate and provide service.

There are lot of startups now in US which is trying to match workers with small / odd jobs – A work-labor matching aggregation online.  Labortopia, Assuredlabour, fixr and Contractor Culture provide some niche services through networked labor which is usually available totally unorganized otherwise.

Do we have such service networking available in India? I remember, when I was in XLRI for an e-business course along with my friend we built a case for a business called Findmymaid.com – This is providing an internet platform to request for maid servants in home. The company would send maids who where pre screened earlier with adequate background checks. Post the work completion you pay the amount online, with certain % goes to Findmymaid. This is just an idea during my college days in 2009. But I was surprise to see the same things getting so popular now in US- with Taskrabbit getting a lot of venture capital to grow international.

In India there is a company called Chachii.com - which is an India Taskrabiit ( Similar to Findmymaid.com).  This business in India is also becoming popular. This business is targeted only for Mumbai Market now. They are planning to expand in other cities as well.  This company as well leverage the social media  & internet a lot. They are getting close to 20% of their traffic from social media – primarily Facebook & Twitter. The viral marketing, Facebook pages are driving adoption.

One of the big number that shocks me always– India has 90%+ of workforce in unorganized sector.But startups like these trying to leverage internet to tap small scale errands / tasks for the unorganized workforce is in a way converting a small % of this pool to organized labor. Also these are the kind of work that fall in the shadow economy – which is unreported / unrecorded economy – They do not contribute to the GDP. Do you know the household works / chores a housewife does, do not add value to the GDP. They just don’t get recorded. Now there is scope to reduce the percentage of this unreported economy as well by these Service Networking startups.