Accepted Panels

The paper discusses the political-economic transformations and its linkages with the emergence of an entrepreneurial landscape in post-reform India. Rapid privatization of several sectors on one hand and the absence of adequate skills to find employment on the other has led the bulk of population to find job opportunities in the expanding informal market. We discuss that although the job opportunities increased, the sectors in which it increased and the precariousness that accompanied them have been missed in scholarship. In the absence of secure formal sector jobs that guaranteed job security, individuals had to resort to the opportunities available in the expanding informal service sector. The individuals bank on the vulnerabilities of those working in the neoliberal economic enclaves who look at the market for provisioning of services: such as grooming and self-care services; home cleaning and repair services and so on. Employing digital ethnography the paper analyses Urban Company application to understand the plethora of job opportunities available to those working in the informal service sector. In doing so, the work aims to assert that though the precarity associated with informality cannot be ignored; nevertheless the availability of job opportunities have been a blessing for many who in the absence of required skills to find employment in the neoliberal economic enclaves would have remained jobless. The paper in discussing the services available on this application explains the neoliberal logic of these demands which are rooted in the changing templates at workplace for the working professionals who in order to deal with the risks and vulnerabilities look towards the market. The work synthesises both the perspectives: the service providers and the customers to present a case that is woven around post-reform India, rise of informality and the emergence of an entrepreneurial ecosystem.