From Caste to Code: The New Industrial Transformation Happening in India

For most people, the “app-based economy” conjures images of e-commerce, food delivery, logistics apps, and gig work platforms. At most, they might stretch their imagination to B2B apps enabling wholesalers and small retailers. But something far more foundational is quietly unfolding in India’s digital landscape — something that I believe is sociological in scope and significance.

We are beginning to see the rise of apps that integrate entire industrial value chains — including those that were once niche, fragmented, and built on informal or ethnic social capital. These aren’t just digital storefronts or service apps. These are platforms that are re-architecting trust, participation, and value creation across traditional industries.


Stitching Fragmented Industries Together

Consider these examples:

  • Apps that connect construction material-makers, builders, material wholesalers, retailers, and even mistris (micro-builders).
  • Apps that bridge furniture-makers, interior designers, decor suppliers, and homeowners.
  • Apps that integrate waste-collectors (including 'kabadiwalas'), waste processors, and industrial buyers of processed 'waste'.

These platforms don’t merely digitise transactions. They thread together entire ecosystems that were previously informal, inefficient, or exclusionary. In doing so, they introduce algorithmic trust in place of old-school reputation and legacy networks.


From Kinship to Code-Based Access

In many parts of India, entry into certain trades and value chains — whether metal-work, waste management, weaving, or construction — has traditionally been mediated by caste, ethnicity, region or even religion. These networks were trust-based, but opaque and closed.

Now, platforms are redefining access:

  • If earlier trust was inherited, now it’s earned -- through platform ratings, service quality, and verified credentials.
  • If earlier opportunity was gated (only those “inside” got work), now it's discoverable (on an open platform, anyone can compete).

That's why I call this a paradigmatic shift — from caste to code. Platforms are flattening hierarchical structures and allowing new entrepreneurs, especially from marginalised or unorganised backgrounds, to enter and thrive in spaces previously out of reach.


But a Word of Caution: Platform Feudalism?

There’s a risk, of course. The same way caste-based or other identify-based entry created bottlenecks, platform-based economies can create new digital bottlenecks. For example, a few top-rated sellers can dominate visibility, while the rest are buried by algorithms. In fact, the platform itself may begin dictating terms, extracting margins, and reducing skilled labour to commoditised service units.

So, while these apps democratise access initially, they can consolidate power just as quickly. Therefore, we must have:

  • Central and state government oversight
  • Interoperable public digital infrastructure
  • Multiple independent app-options per industry
  • Strong anti-monopoly regulations, even in states

In other words, to prevent caste-based or ethnicity-basesd exclusivism from re-emerging in digital form, India must proactively pluralise the power of industry-integrating platforms.


A New Kind of Digital Industrial Order

What we’re seeing is not just digitisation — it’s re-organisation, and potentially, democratization. India is uniquely positioned to benefit from this. Unlike many developed countries, India has:

  • A massive informal workforce
  • A deep culture of micro-entrepreneurship
  • Highly fragmented industry clusters, and
  • A huge diversity of regional, linguistic, and material traditions.

Apps that thread these fragments into cohesive, productive value chains — while safeguarding decentralisation — can unlock a new era of inclusive (and democratic) economic participation.


Final Word

This isn’t just an economic phenomenon. It’s a sociological transformation — a restructuring of how people find work, enter industries, build trust, and scale up.

We should stop looking at the app-based economy through the narrow lens of e-retail and gig work. What’s happening beneath the surface is much deeper: a remapping of India’s industrial logic, a rewriting of who gets to produce and participate, and a quiet revolution in the architecture of opportunity.

We’re moving — one app at a time — from caste to code.

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