New Delhi, Sep 6 (IANS): More than 1 in 2 (52 per cent) gig workers in India feel that their work environment makes it challenging to upskill or find new job opportunities, a report showed on Tuesday.

Almost 50 per cent of online platform workers find their jobs through traditional referral networks despite 80 per cent having internet access, according to the report by CIIE.CO, a startup platform built at IIM Ahmedabad.

The report was prepared after a survey of 4,070 platform-based gig workers between the high earning knowledge workers and daily-wage agricultural workers.

Of the 400 women surveyed, 60 per cent provided services related to being house helps and earned relatively low.

Nearly 78 per cent held less than two different jobs since 2015, while 46.5 per cent of the individuals held their jobs longer than 24 months, the findings showed.

"Over 32.4 per cent of respondents still function on cash. This is in spite of the vast majority of them being literate and having access to the internet," the report noted.

The report suggested that for financial inclusion to truly occur at scale in India, there is a need for technology to bring down costs of servicing end-users to a fraction of what it is today, need for distribution models to be drastically changed to optimise for the last mile, and the unit economics to be more inclusive.

"In many ways, gig workers are channels through which the old and new India interact. Enabling gig workers to own and use their employment, financial, health etc. data will improve their well-being and unlock the growth of both traditional and new economies," said Supriya Sharma, Partner-Insights, CIIE.CO.

Being powered by declining internet and hardware costs, technology-based platforms are becoming a lifeline for employment at a time when traditional sectors dwindle in size and reach.

"Of the 4,070 individuals, over 2,000 respondents were 30 years of age or younger. This stands testament to the trend of young India finding the gig economy and its platforms as preferable sources of work opportunities and income generation," said the report.

Empowering the gig worker with owning and using his or her own data, would improve their wellbeing, including job prospects and financial health, it added.