How flexible work is becoming a long-term career choice for many professionals

In today’s era of rapid digitalisation, flexible work is emerging as a significant job segment globally. Whether it’s a food delivery partner, a warehouse associate, or a restaurant server,  the cohort of workers employed in roles characterized by location or schedule flexibility is growing. By shifting the focus from in-person presence to actual outcomes, this model appeals  to young adults entering the workforce who value flexibility and ownership. As AI becomes integrated across internet-first businesses, trusted flexible workers are now being mobilized to capture human-contextual data for training foundational AI models. This convergence  offers workers both monetary and skilling benefits, solidifying flexible work as a long-term  career option 

India’s flexible economy expanded from 7.7 million workers in FY2020-21 to 12 million in  FY2024-25, representing just over 2% of the total workforce. However, as the number of  Indians employed in flexible work grows faster than overall employment, it is projected that the category of flexible workers will constitute 6.7% of the total workforce by 2029-30.  Within the flexible work space, location-based services – such as drivers for transportation and logistics firms, facility and home management experts and app-based personal services – account for the majority of India’s hourly workers. Another growing category are freelancing professionals for remote IT or digital roles as well as data annotation roles which are growing on account of the increasing need to train AI & ML models. 

The Physical AI industry has quickly embraced this flexible workforce model. Robots operating in the real world require training from people doing real-world tasks. The industry is scaling rapidly – from 100,000 hours of training data in 2024 to projected millions in 2026. To meet this demand, some companies are nurturing trusted relationships with skilled workers, equipping them with wearables to capture diverse data across physical environments. This model fuels growth of the Physical AI economy which is providing workers and host businesses with additional income streams – all while they continue their regular daily jobs.  

This seamless data collection integration, is unlocking three major job categories for flexible workers in India, each offering structured training and long-term career paths. 

• Certified Robot Technicians: The largest emerging segment of workers who will handle hardware resets, navigation failures, battery swaps, and real-time troubleshooting. 
• Data Collection Specialists: Workers dedicated to gathering and refining high quality physical data for robot training models 
• Robotics Operations Managers: Qualified supervisors up-skilled through structured certification programs to manage hybrid human-robot workspaces. 

Specifically designed to support the physical AI economy, these three work categories will witness increasing demand from business building or deploying robotic systems. 

Thus, contrary to the dominant narrative that AI and robotics are eliminating jobs, digital staffing platforms are offering new opportunities that would not have existed a few years ago.  This includes wearing cameras to demonstrate proper culinary techniques, annotating sensor data on warehouse floors and managing fleets of robots in the field. By empowering many of 

these skilled individuals with proprietary wearable hardware systems for capturing robot training data, these firms are simultaneously delivering high-quality, diverse training data and scaling data collection to firms at the forefront of robotics development. When these robots are deployed in real-world scenarios, certified robot technicians will be engaged to keep them operational; thereby establishing a circular economy that will expand in size with increasing robotic deployments. 

While large businesses adopt flexible work to streamline operations, new-age platforms are looking ahead and providing new income and career advancement for professionals trained in specialized human skills. As digital labour platforms contribute to the formalisation of employment across India’s booming flexible platform economy, they will inspire a new wave of professionals and hourly workers to take up flexible work as a career, thereby shattering traditional barriers to career mobility.

(The views expressed in this article are by – “Mr. Vaibhav Pandey – Country Head & Senior Director Product, India, Instawork. Technuter.com doesn’t take any responsibility for it.)