Squeeze machines too

This is funny, but I learnt how to clean a house properly only after moving to Europe. Growing up in India and Qatar, there was always someone to help. I made occasional attempts as a child, but cleaning, laundry, dishes and household chores were never skills I needed to master.

Living abroad changed that. You quickly realise that when labour is expensive, people become remarkably creative about productivity. Suddenly, every tool, appliance, process and habit mattered.

Fast forward to today. India is witnessing an explosion of instant household services. Cleaning, laundry, repairs, domestic help. On demand and at your doorstep.

The demand is real. The convenience is undeniable. And the business logic is impeccable.

Companies like Urban Company have proven the category. Now challengers like Pronto and Snabbit are emerging at breakneck speed. Investors see a familiar equation: demand, supply, technology, market. Done!

They're probably right. Yet I can't help feeling that we're celebrating the easy problem.

Before anyone misunderstands me, this isn't a moral argument. These jobs create livelihoods. They provide income, dignity and opportunity for millions. That honestly matters a lot. My concern lies elsewhere.

The hypothesis

Here's my hypothesis. India's greatest strength and greatest weakness may have been the same thing: abundant, cheaper labour. Outsourcing. Delivery networks. Household services. Back-office operations. We have become exceptionally good at building business models around human effort.

What if that same abundance reduced the urgency to mechanise, automate and relentlessly pursue productivity?

When labour is cheap, societies optimise for labour. When labour is expensive, societies are forced to innovate.

The countries that transformed themselves into economic powerhouses did not simply work harder. They found ways to make machines, systems and technology work harder. Meanwhile, we often reach for another pair of hands before we reach for a better tool.

Perhaps India's abundance of labour has delayed its obsession with productivity. That may be uncomfortable to hear. It may even be wrong. Yet it is a debate worth having. I think it has a lot to do with mindset.

What history suggests

Economic history offers a useful lens here. A well-known argument about the Industrial Revolution is that it began in Britain partly because labour there was expensive relative to coal and capital. That made it worth inventing machines that replaced human effort. Where labour was cheaper, the same inventions made less economic sense, and were adopted later.

Something similar shows up in more recent history. Economies facing labour shortages, ageing populations or high wages, such as Japan, South Korea and Germany, became leaders in industrial robotics and factory automation. Necessity created the market, and the market created world-class companies.

The lesson is not that cheap labour is bad. It is that cheap labour removes the pressure that forces productivity innovation. Without that pressure, it has to come from somewhere else: ambition, policy, or founders who choose the harder problem anyway.

Where are the robots?

Every time I see a new startup making household services more accessible, I wonder: where are the startups obsessed with making household work disappear altogether? Where are the robots? Where are the tools that make one person ten times more productive? More important, where is the patient, pro-risk capital?

The future of India cannot be built solely on finding new ways to deploy cheap labour. It must also be built on finding new ways to amplify human capability.

Where to play

The opportunity is not to replace workers overnight. It is to raise what each worker can achieve. That opens a few promising spaces.

• Tools that multiply a worker. Better equipment, smart scheduling, diagnostic aids and AI assistants that let one technician or cleaner do the work of two, and earn more for it.
• Appliances built for Indian homes. Products designed around Indian kitchens, dust, water quality and power supply, at Indian price points.
• Service robotics for commercial spaces. Offices, hospitals, malls and warehouses, where the economics of automation work sooner than in individual homes.
• Physical AI in factories and logistics. The places where productivity gains are largest and where India's manufacturing ambitions will be won or lost.

Each of these needs hardware, patience and engineering depth. Which is exactly why they are less crowded than another on-demand app.

What it would take

None of this happens by accident. If India wants to squeeze machines too, three things have to change together.

• Founders who chase the harder problem: making the work disappear, not just delivering it faster.
• Capital that is patient and pro-risk, willing to fund hardware, robotics and deep tech on longer horizons than an app.
• Customers, households and companies alike, who value productivity enough to pay for it.

The countries that got rich did not run out of people. They decided human time was too valuable to waste. That is the mindset shift India now needs.

Squeeze labour all you want. Just learn to squeeze machines too.