I grew up in Cooch Behar, West Bengal. Small city. Everyone knows everyone.
Then I went to Bangalore for my BTech in CSE. And Bangalore is a different world. Everything is on your phone. Need a plumber? App. Need someone to clean your bathroom? App. I used Urban Company all the time.
When I came back home, with a hybrid job, I kept noticing the gap as always😂. Cooch Behar actually needed somthing like that! You needed a plumber, you asked your neighbor. You needed a maid, you called some aunty who knew someone. The whole thing was offline, unorganized, and honestly kind of exploitative for the workers too.
So I thought, why not build it?
Sounds simple but i sware It was not.
Before I Built Anything, I reasearched
I spent a month just talking to people, workers, families and ofc my own family.
The workers had real problems. Clients would squeeze extra hours out of them. No fixed schedule. No protection. If something went wrong, they had no one to back them up.
The families had different problems. If their maid was on leave, they had no one to take care of them. Reliability was a mess.
Once I understood both sides, I made my pitch. To the workers: I will give you a professional tag. Fixed hours, fixed work, no exploitation and you get paid ontime. To the families: service whenever you need it. Even if your regular person is on leave, we send someone else.
Its like we are building a platform for the workers, not not just for the users.
I Did Campaigns Like a Politician
I literally went to the areas where most of the workers live. Knocked on doors. Organized small gatherings. Explained what I was building.
Yes, it felt like a political campaign😂. And honestly, it kind of worked the same way. You show up, you talk to people face to face, you earn some trust.
The Website Did Its Job
I built the website. Set up everything needed to rank on Google.
Within a week, orders started coming in with Zero performance marketing. Zero paid ads. Two to three per week. Not huge, but it was all organic. I was handling everything myself, while also running my freelancing and my full time job at the same time.
It was working. And then the gig worker problem hit me like a wall.
The Real Problem: Gig Workers in a Tier-3 City
Nobody was hired full time. Everyone was a gig worker. That was fine for a few time, but it created a trust problem fast.
Workers would go to a client's home, the client would say “Just give me your number, I’ll call you directly next time, and we can settle for a lower amount.” The worker agrees, cuts out the platform and I lose the client.
As a solution I tried incentives. Work 3 gigs, get good reviews, earn a bonus. And it actually helped. If they work directly withsomeone, they wont get the bonus.
But the bigger issue was something I could not incentivize my way out of.
In a tier-3 city, a lot of people are genuinely okay with what they have. I am talking about the workers. The ones with fire in them, the ones who want more? They move to Bangalore or Kolkata. They do not stay.
So I was always short on good, reliable people.
One time, I had a bathroom cleaning order placed 4 days in advance. I confirmed two different workers, just in case. First one cancelled with in 30 minutes. The second one, the one who was definitely coming, cancelled 10 minutes before the visit.
That is not a one-off. That is the pattern.
I Tried the Aya Centers
When gig workers kept falling through, I shifted strategy. Aya centers are the old school version of this. Offline agencies that connect workers to families. They have been doing this for decades.
I went to almost every center in the city. My pitch: I bring you more clients. You get business, I get the supply. Everyone wins.
95% said no!
One said yes. It did not really work out.
What I Know Now
I need capital. That is the honest answer.
Urban Company did not scale by hoping gig workers would stay loyal. They trained people. They hired full time. They controlled quality because they controlled the workforce.
Without capital, you can not do that. And without that, you can not build the trust that makes the whole thing work.
I am still at it.
This is just half of the story. And from day one, I did every single bit of it alone.
Let's see where it goes.