3.1 crore people, almost no record of any of them
The trust layer for India’s household workforce.
StandByMe turns the trust you already place in the person who runs your home into a verified, portable record — built once, checked forever, never locked inside one household's memory.
Illustrative profile
Cook & house help
Gurugram
- Identity verified
- Aadhaar + e-Shram UAN
- Police verification
- Cleared
- Tenure logged
- 11 years · 4 households
- Salary history
- 38 months tracked
- Household rating
- 4.8 / 5 · 4 households
- Insurance
- PMSBY + PMJJBY active
The context
India’s largest invisible workforce
Domestic and household work is the third-largest occupational category on e-Shram, after agriculture and construction — and almost none of it is documented.
0.00 cr
Unorganised workers on e-Shram (14 Jul 2026)
0.0 cr
Are domestic & household workers — 9.9% of that base
0.0%
Of domestic-work registrations on e-Shram are women
0%
Of registered informal workers earn ₹10,000 a month or less
Government records formally count only about 47.5 lakh domestic workers. The ILO puts it near 2 crore. Unions estimate 5–9 crore. Nobody actually knows who they are.
Sources: Ministry of Labour & Employment / e-Shram (Jul 2026); Labour Bureau; ILO; ActionAid India (2025). Domestic-worker count derived from the 9.9% occupational share of e-Shram registrations.
The problem
Five broken things inside every Indian home
No trust platform
Engagement between a household and the person who works there runs on WhatsApp forwards and neighbour referrals. There is no system of record for the relationship.
Verification is broken
No police check, no verified ID trail, no employment history. Households hire on instinct and hope — and a worker carries no proof of a clean record from one home to the next.
Salary is untracked
Wages move in cash, undocumented and unattributed. Someone who has worked fifteen years has zero income proof to show a bank.
No pay scales exist
There is no defined rate card for a city, a sector, or a community cluster. Wages are set by bargaining power, not benchmark.
No path to support
A loan, an insurance claim, or advice on saving has no formal channel. The household is the only intermediary — and is unequipped for the job.
The result
A workforce with no verifiable identity at work, no income history, no reputation that travels — and therefore no access to credit, insurance or dignity.
Invisibility is not neutral. It costs money.
And the household loses too.
No recourse
Theft, abandonment or dispute has no formal escalation path — only the police, or nothing.
No continuity
Someone leaves and takes years of household knowledge with them. Replacement starts from zero.
No accountability
Neither side can prove what was agreed: hours, leave, salary, increments, notice.
The solution
The household onboards. The record does the rest.
StandByMe is a system of record for household employment. The family lists the help, and every interaction after that quietly builds a permanent, portable credential.
- 01
The household lists the help
A name, a role, a start date. No cold marketplace signup, no waiting for her to sign up first.
- 02
Verification runs
Aadhaar and e-Shram identity, police verification, address and reference checks.
- 03
Salary is tracked
Monthly wage payments logged and reconciled. A real income history begins.
- 04
Households vouch
Tenure attestations and ratings from every home she has served.
- 05
Support gets delivered
Loan guidance, insurance enrolment and savings help, routed through the household.
Every month of work makes the profile more valuable — to her, to the next household, and to the lender who will one day underwrite her.
Illustrative profile
Cook & house help
Gurugram
- Identity verified
- Aadhaar + e-Shram UAN
- Police verification
- Cleared
- Tenure logged
- 11 years · 4 households
- Salary history
- 38 months tracked
- Household rating
- 4.8 / 5 · 4 households
- Insurance
- PMSBY + PMJJBY active
The product
A credential, not a listing
Verified identity
Aadhaar-seeded, e-Shram linked, police-verified — checked once, trusted everywhere.
Tenure attestations
Each household signs off on the dates she worked. Employment history becomes provable.
Multi-household ratings
Reliability, skill and conduct, rated by several households — not one opinion.
Income record
Tracked monthly wages build the income statement no domestic worker has ever had.
Benefit status
What she is enrolled in, what is lapsing, and what she has never claimed.
Why StandByMe
We inverted who onboards whom
Every gig and staffing platform asks the worker to sign up so households can search her. That builds a labour marketplace. We ask the household to list the help they already employ. That builds a trust registry.
Typical gig & staffing platforms
- She signs up to be found and booked
- Optimises for supply liquidity and fill rate
- Reputation locked inside one app
- Relationship is transactional and short
- The household is a customer, not a guarantor
StandByMe
- The household lists the help they already trust
- Optimises for verified, durable relationships
- A profile she owns, not one the app owns
- Reputation compounds across households
- The household vouches — and puts its name behind it
The safety net
Real, and far too thin
e-Shram routes domestic workers into PMSBY and PMJJBY. Both are solid products at their price. Neither is remotely enough to absorb a household shock.
accidental death
partial disability
life cover
| Policy | Cover |
|---|---|
| PMSBY — accidental death | ₹2.0 lakh |
| PMSBY — partial disability | ₹1.0 lakh |
| PMJJBY — life cover | ₹2.0 lakh |
≈20 months
of household income is all ₹2 lakh replaces, at the ₹10,000 monthly wage 94% of registered workers earn.
Nothing for illness
No wage-loss cover, no cover for the far more common outcome: injury or sickness that stops her working but isn’t fatal.
Nothing for the household
No liability cover for the family, no continuity plan for the months she is out.
Sources: PMSBY (₹20/yr, ₹2L accidental death, ₹1L partial disability); PMJJBY (₹436/yr, ₹2L life cover); e-Shram income distribution, Ministry of Labour & Employment.
The rails were just laid. Nobody is riding them.
Aug 2021
e-Shram launches
National database of unorganised workers begins.
Oct 2024
One-Stop Solution
Welfare schemes integrated into a single worker portal.
Jan 2025
State microsites
States get registration, verification and analytics rails.
Nov 2025
Four labour codes live
29 central labour laws consolidated, effective 21 Nov 2025.
Jul 2026
31.78 cr registered
15 welfare schemes now mapped to the database.
Codes cover them, no law protects them
They sit inside all four labour codes, yet India still has no dedicated law for domestic work. The Supreme Court flagged the gap in 2025; Karnataka has a draft bill in motion.
Three crore identities are already digital
The hardest part — identifying and Aadhaar-seeding the workforce — is done. What's missing is the employment layer on top of it.
Fintech has run out of new borrowers
Lenders and insurers need fresh, underwritable segments. Verified household employment data is the missing input for the last large uncovered cohort.
Sources: Ministry of Labour & Employment; PIB; Supreme Court, Ajay Malik (2025); Karnataka Domestic Workers (Social Security and Welfare) Draft Bill 2025.
The compounding asset
What this really builds is an underwriting file
Inputs accumulated
- Verified identity + e-Shram UAN
- Household-attested tenure, home by home
- Tracked monthly wage payments
- Ratings from multiple independent households
- Benefit enrolment and claim history
Year three of a profile is worth many times year one — and no competitor can buy that history.
What it unlocks
Better insurance
Priced on real tenure and continuity rather than a flat unorganised-sector assumption — so cover can go past ₹2 lakh.
Small-ticket credit
A documented income stream and a vouching household are two things a lender has never had for this segment.
Savings & investment
Recurring deposits, gold and micro-SIPs delivered where trust already sits — through the household, not a cold call.
Pay-scale benchmarks
Aggregated, anonymised wage data produces the first real rate card by city, role and cluster.
Give the person who runs your home a record that proves it.
One profile, verified once, that keeps working for her long after this household is one of several she's worked in.