At Instawork, we’re driven by our vision to create economic opportunity for local businesses and skilled hourly professionals in communities around the world.
Sumir Meghani
Top 50 leaders shaping the gig economy
At Instawork, we’re driven by our vision to create economic opportunity for local businesses and skilled hourly professionals in communities around the world.
Sumir exemplifies the consummate entrepreneur. He innovates with an engineer's perspective in every role to harness the power of large networks. While leading teams at Groupon and Yahoo and even in his parent's family business, he identified hiring as a critical issue.
Sumir found that the ability to find workers at the right time could help or hinder teams in small business and large businesses alike. As someone who is motivated by solving big problems, he looked toward the challenge of making it easier to hire the largest group of workers in the labor market – blue collar workers.
While networks like LinkedIn helped office workers showcase their skills and find career opportunities, there was no comparable platform for the millions of blue-collar workers across the country.
At Instawork, our technology is enabling businesses to be more efficient, flexible, and dynamic, while providing our network of over six million workers with the freedom to choose when, where, and how they work best. We will continue to innovate and push boundaries to create a better future for local communities.
Instawork was founded in 2015 with the mission to efficiently connect businesses with hourly workers, making hiring as easy as ordering a ride or meal. Now in less than 10 years, Instawork has created economic opportunities for local businesses and hourly workers across the globe. With the belief that everyone deserves a chance to thrive in their careers, Instawork empowers hourly workers to take control of their careers and find the employment opportunities that shape their lives.
Trusted by thousands of small and large businesses, customers include brands such as Google, Microsoft, US Open, Nobu, Denver Art Museum, and SoFi Stadium just to name a few.
In 2015, Instawork was founded to efficiently connect businesses with hourly workers, making hiring as easy as ordering a ride or meal. Now, Instawork is the leading marketplace for hourly workers, with over 6M hourly workers in the network, covering 40+ markets across North America, collecting over 2+ billion data signals to optimize worker/business matches.
Instawork is the largest platform connecting businesses to hourly workers. With over 6 million workers across North America on the platform, the sheer scale of this network has the ability to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes. From branch offices of large national companies to workers for small, local businesses, Instawork has the ability meet the needs of a range of businesses. How does Instawork stand out in this space?
Delivering first-class shift experiences.
Workers go through a background check and validation of work history and certifications. For large shift groups, Instawork sends a team member to manage the personnel to ensure a high quality of performance during the engagement.
Instawork invests in AI and other cutting-edge technologies to improve the efficiency and speed of the network. Instawork collects billions of data points on the matches that take place on the network. They use these signals to optimize worker fit, increase reliability, and maximize the rate of workers requested to return.
Instawork uses rewards to retain and incentivize the top workers or the highest-performing workers with programs, which can include access to the Instawork Card. Other benefits include free instant pay and up to 5% off gas/public transport, which helps workers stay with Instawork.
Thousands of companies have benefited from Instawork’s scale, technology and high quality workers. These are just a few of the key aspects that allow Instawork to stand out from the crowd and attract the millions of workers and thousands of businesses that leverage the platform.
The Instawork platform leverages a robust technology platform to match the right worker with the right opportunity at the right time. Workers in a range of roles look to Instawork to find their next career opportunity in hospitality, retail, stadiums and events, warehouse and manufacturing, cleaning, and brand representation. Businesses and workers benefit from the following aspects of the platform.
Businesses get matched with thousands of qualified hourly workers who are nearby and available for one-off shifts, or any projects up to 30 days.
Businesses can connect with workers who are available to complete projects for a month or more.
Businesses can search, message, and hire workers in the Instawork network looking for long-term opportunities
Every worker goes through a vetting process. 93% of businesses want their workers back.
Workers are incentivized to be reliable which results in the platform’s low 2% no-show rate.
Businesses see profiles and experience of workers as soon as they pick up their shift.
With these features and more, Instawork has established itself as a mainstay among hourly labor marketplaces. The mobile app for workers and platform for businesses are continuously improved to leverage the newest technologies, making use of a variety of data points, such as worker location, previous performance and company type to make faster and more accurate matches.
It's about something much broader than gigs and shifts. We want to build the biggest blue caller labor network.
Instawork’s long term vision is to is empower millions of blue collar workers with the opportunities and flexibility that can propel their career. It will continue to build on the wealth of data they have collected over years of making successful matches for short term and long term roles in a variety of industries.
We’re helping give flexibility at Instawork to those who don’t have the luxury to just work from home, and in fact, give them and our business partners more freedom to self-organize and ultimately create more employment in the world. And so I think we’re going to play a really, really important role in driving flexibility.
The Instawork platform will only become more ingrained in the workflows of businesses around the world. With a unique data set informed by billions of transactions related to matches and shifts, Instawork continues to provide the industry with granular insights about the blue collar workforce to improve the quality and quantity of matches. Deep insights about workers’ skills, preferences, performance, culture fit, career trajectory, and location make Instawork a necessary node in the interconnected systems of workers and employers that make up the dynamic landscape of tomorrow’s careers.
Entrepreneur Of The Year celebrates ambitious entrepreneurs who are building bolder futures.
Instawork says it offers the flexibility of gig work but with more stability, for both job seekers and employers. The new funding will fuel its work towards integrating AI into its services.
Today's workforce has come to expect a high level of flexibility at their jobs. That includes hourly workers, whose roles must often be performed in-person and who make up more than half of the American workforce. Historically, they haven't had this luxury, but Instawork, which developed a staffing platform to connect local businesses with local talent at a moment's notice, has been a major driver in changing that.
