The race for convenience in urban India has moved indoors. From groceries to grooming, the “10-minute delivery” mindset is evolving into a new kind of immediacy, where domestic help can now arrive with the same speed and certainty as a food order. Cleaners, cooks, and caregivers are just a tap away.
A clutch of new-age platforms is reshaping how Indians access domestic help. Leading the charge are startups like Swastha, Book My Bai, and Helper4U, which promise verified, trained domestic workers at the tap of a screen. Their pitch is simple but transformative: reduce the friction of hiring home help through tech-enabled convenience.
This model rides on the success of India’s gig economy, which has seen explosive growth in recent years. Companies like Urban Company paved the way by offering home services like spa treatments, plumbing, and appliance repair through easy app bookings. Now, this playbook is being adapted to the far more unstructured sector of household labor.
Changing the Game for Millions
Traditionally, the domestic help industry in India has been fragmented, informal, and deeply reliant on word-of-mouth. Workers are often hired through personal networks, housing societies, or local agents. Verification, background checks, and skill training were rare luxuries. But platforms like Swastha are changing that equation by offering not just access but assurance.
Swastha, which began in 2022, claims to have a growing network of over 600 trained professionals across major Indian metros. Customers can book hourly services ranging from cooking to elderly care, often within a few hours. The startup ensures that workers are background-verified and upskilled regularly. It also provides digital records of payments and work logs, creating a formal structure in an otherwise informal space.
For families, this offers flexibility without the long-term commitment of hiring a full-time domestic worker. For workers, it opens doors to better wages, job security, and recognition. Most importantly, it bridges a crucial gap by bringing dignity and protection to a workforce long ignored by labor laws and digital inclusion.
The Business of Convenience
The model is also proving attractive to investors and entrepreneurs. India’s domestic help market is estimated to be worth billions, with over 50 million households employing some form of home assistance. But only a fraction of this is organized. That means there’s massive room for digital intervention.
Platforms like Book My Bai offer subscription-based hiring, connecting families with full-time live-in help, especially in urban clusters like Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Delhi. Meanwhile, Helper4U focuses on blue-collar workers and helps match job seekers with employers in just a few clicks, cutting out the middleman.
These companies are also experimenting with service bundling, such as packages that offer daily cleaning, weekly deep-cleaning, and biweekly cooking support. Prices vary by city, service, and duration. While affordability remains a concern for some middle-income households, many users consider the tradeoff worth it for reliability and professionalism.
Worker Welfare in a Digital Age
However, the rush to digitize domestic help also raises critical questions. Will these platforms genuinely empower workers—or simply turn them into app-driven labor without social protection?
The sector is largely female-dominated and often marked by exploitation, low wages, and lack of contracts. Most platforms argue that they improve working conditions by ensuring timely payment, insurance, training, and even grievance redressal mechanisms. Swastha, for instance, offers accidental insurance and performance-based incentives.
But challenges remain. Not all workers have smartphones or the digital literacy to use apps. Many are migrants unfamiliar with local languages or labor rights. Without strong regulatory oversight, there’s a risk that the gig model may replicate existing hierarchies in a sleeker form.
Some NGOs are stepping in to provide training and awareness. Collaborations with state governments for skill certification are also underway. The hope is to create a hybrid model, where tech platforms offer reach and scale, while civil society ensures ethical practices.
Cultural Shift or Urban Bubble?
Skeptics argue that this model, while innovative, may be restricted to the top 5% of India’s urban elite. In smaller cities and rural areas, traditional hiring practices remain dominant. Even within cities, many households are hesitant to replace “trusted” domestic workers with app-based bookings.
Yet, the idea of on-demand house help is gaining ground, especially among young, nuclear families, working couples, and elderly individuals living alone. In metros, the demand for flexible services that match one’s lifestyle is only likely to grow.
Much like the food delivery boom, which seemed niche a decade ago and is now ubiquitous, digital domestic help could gradually become the norm. As the space evolves, the challenge will be to balance scalability with ethics, speed with sensitivity.
Insightful Take
India is entering a phase where domestic labor is no longer invisible. As technology reimagines everyday chores, the homemaker’s silent partner; be it a cook, a nanny, or a cleaner, is finally stepping into the formal economy.
The next 10-minute revolution may not just be about what arrives at your doorstep—but who. And how they are treated in the process will define whether this transformation is merely convenient or truly inclusive.
