An Introduction to Platform Economy in India

The Rise of Emerging Markets in the Digital Age: Leapfrogging, Disruption and the Governance of Inclusive Digital Growth

The rise of emerging markets in the digital age represents a structural reordering of the global economic landscape rather than a peripheral catching-up story. This paper examines the rapid digital transformation under way in these markets and analyses how technological advances — mobile internet, financial technology, e-commerce and multi-sided digital platforms — have simultaneously empowered firms and consumers. Drawing on an integrative review of scholarly literature and a synthesis of secondary evidence from the World Bank Global Findex, the GSMA, UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and national payment authorities, the paper argues that emerging economies are not merely adopting technologies developed elsewhere but are generating institutionally distinctive models of digital growth. Four drivers are identified: mobile-first connectivity, the mobile money and fintech revolution, platform-mediated commerce, and state-sponsored digital public infrastructure. Comparative evidence from India, Kenya, Brazil, Indonesia and Nigeria demonstrates that leapfrogging is real but conditional: it occurs where affordable connectivity, interoperable payment rails and permissive-yet-supervised regulation coincide. The paper also documents the constraints on this transformation. Although 96 per cent of the world’s population lives within mobile broadband coverage, some 3.1 billion people who could connect do not, producing a usage gap driven by device cost, digital literacy, gender norms and locally irrelevant content. Data protection regimes remain uneven, platform concentration raises questions about where digital value is captured, and the emerging artificial intelligence divide threatens to reproduce old asymmetries in a new form. The paper contributes a Digital Leapfrogging Readiness framework organised around four interdependent conditions — infrastructural, institutional, capability and content conditions — and derives five strategic imperatives for firms competing in these markets. It concludes that the developmental promise of emerging-market digitalisation depends less on the pace of technology adoption than on the quality of the governance arrangements built around it.

From Market to Platform

The rapid growth of the digital economy, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has fundamentally transformed business patterns for Culinary MSME Traders in Indonesia. This study explores how traditional traders adapt to digitalization, the economic impacts of digital platforms, transformation challenges, and the collaboration between MSMEs and the gig economy ecosystem. Using a qualitative approach, the research involved in-depth interviews with two Culinary MSME Traders who transitioned to digital platforms and collaborated with gig economy services. The findings indicate that prior to digital adoption, trading was limited by direct interactions, narrow consumer reach, and unstable income. Following the shift to digital media (WhatsApp, Facebook, and e-commerce), traders experienced increased efficiency, broader market expansion, and improved income stability. Furthermore, collaboration with gig economy couriers, such as ShopeeFood and GoFood, significantly streamlined distribution processes. However, despite these benefits, traders face persistent obstacles, including limited digital literacy, internet costs, and a decline in traditional social market interactions. In conclusion, while digital transformation poses certain challenges, it has overall enhanced business sustainability and merchant welfare, fostering a more.

Beyond the click: Neoliberal governmentality and platform delivery labor in Türkiye’s on-demand economy

NAVIGATING THE REGULATORY CROSSROADS: INDIA’S DILEMMA ON THE EMPLOYMENT STATUS OF PLATFORM WORKERS

The platform and gig economy exemplifies a profound change in the structuring, exchanging and rewarding of labor in the economy. Typically, the traditional employment relationship is based on long-term contracts, and identifiable employers, while gig work is based on digitally mediated, decentralized work transactions between service providers and clients. This in turn has significant implications for the legal system, labor rights, and social protection systems in India. Given its growing digital infrastructure and surplus labor force, India is a site of such work. According to estimates from the International Labor Organization (ILO), there were more than 777 digital labor platforms worldwide by 2023, thus generating millions of jobs and exacerbating employment precarities. In addition, the NITI Aayog estimated that gig and platform employment workforce was 7.7 million and would grow to 23.5 million by 2030, which would be about 6.7% of the non-agricultural workforce in India. This was reaffirmed in the ILO’s 2024, “Expansion of the Gig and Platform Economy in India Report” which agrees and takes note that platform workers have developed into a new class of economic actors that still have an unclear legal status and recognition. The ambiguity that workers faced was further compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though the lockdowns imposed did halt many sectors, platform based services, such as delivery, online freelancing, and logistics, quickly expanded. This underscored both the resilience and the vulnerabilities present in the gig work sector. Questions of social security problems escalated, as did the issue of declining incomes due to rising platform commissions and algorithmic opacity. In response to this uncertain political economy of labor, questions around the employment categorization of platform workers have become urgent. Are these workers employees, independent contractors, or a categorization of something in between? This paper examines these issues through the lens of the Indian laws, comparative global analysis and emerging policy responses

Devalue

Charting new territory for scholars in an understudied area, Devalue offers a socio-economic analysis of emerging Web3 actors who specialise in blockchain applications within the culture, media, and communication industries. Based on rich research that includes comparative case studies focusing on organisations in North America and Europe using blockchain technology for the storage, production, and distribution of cultural contents and services, Jacob Matthews scrutinises whether blockchain-enabled platforms objectively reshape value production. Drawing together an analysis of two typically separated levels of political economy – the production of economic value and the production of ideology, the chapters critique the very concept of value, questioning if Web3 players, despite positioning themselves against the ‘civilisational reality’ of contemporary capitalism, merely reproduce conventional valorisation and reinforce the predominance of exchange abstraction. Leading to a more profound critique of the concept of value itself and linking to broader political stakes and theoretical questions, Devalue is relevant for scholars and students including Information and Communication Science, Media Studies, Internet Studies, Critical Theory, Political Economy of Communications, Sociology, Socioeconomics, Philosophy, Society and Technology studies, and Digital Humanities.

BREAKING THE PARALLAX: BIG TECH IN INDIA

"This paper examines the role of Big Tech in India through the conceptual lens of parallax, understood as the analytical distortion that arises when platform power is assessed from shifting institutional, legal, and geopolitical vantage points. Existing scholarship and policy debates tend to frame Big Tech in India either through Global North regulatory paradigms emphasizing monopoly power, market foreclosure, and the need for ex-ante constraints or through a domestic developmental narrative that positions digital platforms as engines of innovation, inclusion, and infrastructural expansion. This paper argues that neither perspective, taken in isolation, adequately captures the legal and political economy of platform governance in India. The paper situates India as a strategic site in the global platform economy, characterized by scale, data intensity, and regulatory experimentation, while also marked by structural dependencies on foreign digital infrastructure. It analyses how India’s fragmented regulatory architecture, spanning competition law, intermediary regulation, data governance, and sector-specific controls, produces overlapping and sometimes contradictory legal classifications of Big Tech firms. These shifting classifications generate a parallax effect within law itself, enabling both regulatory discretion and strategic compliance by platforms. Focusing on competition law and state-platform relations, the paper shows how formal commitments to market contestability coexist with practical constraints arising from infrastructural reliance and governance trade-offs. Antitrust enforcement, while normatively significant, remains limited in its capacity to address entrenched platform power without disrupting essential digital services. At the same time, the Indian state’s relationship with Big Tech is neither one of capture nor outright resistance, but of negotiated interdependence combining regulation, partnership, and control.