KarmaLife will give small business loans to gig workers and boost their financial inclusion through formal institutional lending. KarmaLife operates in a B2B2C model and has worked with 50+ organizations, including Flipkart, Elasticrun, Uber, Porter, and Delhivery, to offer employees the option of accessing their payout before payday. KarmaLife claims to have provided its services to 2.7 lakh gig and blue-collar workers so far.
Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) has partnered with OnionLife Private Ltd to use its technology platform KarmaLife in a pilot to provide small enterprise loans to gig workers and increase their access to formal institutional finance.
KarmaLife will provide microloans to gig workers via a mobile app. This will enable gig workers to manage the liquidity demands of their enterprise activities.
S Ramann, CMD of SIDBI, stated, “…the partnership with OnionLife will help us understand and assist the new and emerging enterprise class of gig workers.” The pilot will also contribute to the development of an institutional method for assessing credit risk in this area.”
Rohit Rathi, cofounder and CEO of KarmaLife, stated, “We are thrilled to be working with SIDBI to provide gig workers with the financial resources they need to thrive in the gig economy.” Our objective is to find effective ways to enable gig workers to efficiently manage liquidity for their businesses.”
According to the brand, as India’s gig economy grows, there is an urgent need to provide the inexpensive and accessible financial support to non-salaried gig workers who rely on platform aggregators for a living.
KarmaLife, founded in 2020 by Rathi, Naveen Budda, and Badal Malick, works in a B2B2C model and has worked with over 50 organizations, including Flipkart, Elasticrun, Uber, Porter, and Delhivery, to provide employees with the option to obtain their salary before payday.
KarmaLife claims to have provided services to 2.7 lakh gig and blue-collar workers thus far. It provides subscription-based credit products, such as earned wage access and a line of credit. KarmaLife has created a proprietary real-time credit scoring system called KarmaScore.
Furthermore, the startup’s core product, earned wage access (EWA), allows gig and blue-collar workers to access a portion of their earned but unpaid money at any time prior to payday.
As of 2023, the firm claimed to service over 100,000 blue-collar workers via its platform.
