It has been 6 years.
This is the real story.
2019
The Question That Started It All
A small flat in Delhi. No big office. No investor. Just two people and one question that would not leave them alone.
Vidyarthi Baddireddy left Deloitte, where he worked in strategy and operations. Before that he was a Field Engineer at GE Healthcare. An MBA from the Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi. Someone who had seen corporate India from the inside and chose to build something outside of it.
Kajal Malik left her corporate career. She and Vidyarthi had met during their MBA at FMS Delhi. This was their second startup together, their first was a SaaS platform connecting colleges with companies for campus placements. They knew how to build. They knew each other.
They saw something others were missing. Young people in smaller cities wanted to earn. Companies wanted customers. Nobody was connecting the two.
What if we filled that gap?
January 2020
App Live. First Client. Then COVID.
The app launched on the Play Store. Ok Credit became the first client. The model was straightforward: brands pay per verified sale, gig workers earn per completed sale. Funded entirely by their own savings, the founders could see it working.
Then March 2020 arrived.
The entire model was built on people going out, meeting others, selling face to face. COVID was the worst possible timing for a company built exactly this way.
They never stopped.
Lockdown triggered reverse migration. Millions returned to their hometowns. They were home. They needed to earn. PickMyWork was there, and what looked like a crisis became the opportunity that proved the model.
2021
Someone Said Yes.
For the first time, a major global investor believed in what PickMyWork was building. Orbit StartUps (SOSV) selected PickMyWork for their global cohort, one of the most competitive early-stage programmes in the world.
In under 30 months, PickMyWork had helped over 3,000 gig workers earn more than Rs. 3 crore. The number mattered less than what it represented, thousands of people across Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities earning their first independent income from a phone.
The unit economics were positive. The model worked. It was time to scale.
2022
The Year Everything Clicked.
The entire team met in person for the first time. People came from 19 different cities across India. Awkward hellos. New faces putting names to months of calls and messages. And one photograph in front of the Taj Mahal in Agra, proof that this was all actually real.
Team was closing major clients – Amazon Pay, Flipkart, Meesho, Airtel. Vidyarthi was looking at a map of India filled with thousands of partner pins across cities most companies never thought to reach. Tech Team was making sure the technology held up at every scale.
A new office opened. A $1 million seed round closed. And then a business school included PickMyWork as a case study in their marketing curriculum.
For PickMyWork, that day felt bigger than the funding round.
2023
A Bold Bet on Financial Services.
PickMyWork made a deliberate, focused choice. General internet companies were set aside. The company went all in on banking, financial services, and insurance, credit cards, Demat accounts, savings accounts and loans. The mission sharpened: connect real India to real financial products.
It was a high-conviction move at a time when many platforms were chasing volume across categories. PickMyWork chose depth over breadth.
“We are not celebrating numbers. We are celebrating stories, dreams, and ambitions of every gig worker.” – Kajal Malik, Co-founder
2024
200 Cities. India’s Biggest Brands.
Few people who started in a Delhi flat were now the distribution partner for Google Pay, Amazon Pay, and Kotak Mahindra Bank. 200 cities. Thousands of active gig partners earning weekly commissions directly to their bank accounts.
The original question had found its answer, and it was working at a scale none of them had imagined when they started.
2025
San Francisco. Ice Bath. Tim Draper.
Meet the Drapers – Tim Draper’s global startup pitch competition. Over 3,000 startups entered from India alone. PickMyWork cleared every round over a year-long evaluation process that, as Vidyarthi later said, forced the team to sharpen their vision about what gig work in India could really become.
Grand Finale. San Francisco. The format had one more twist. Three minutes in an ice bath before a one-minute pitch on stage. Body freezing. Mind working.
“It is one thing to pitch in boardrooms and Zoom calls. To stand there and represent the work of thousands of gig workers from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities of India on a global stage, that was surreal.” – Vidyarthi Baddireddy
Top 2 finish. Tim Draper invested. A small Delhi flat to a Silicon Valley stage. In six years.
2026
Best Month Ever. And Just Getting Started.
Profitable scale. 200 cities. Thousands of active gig partners earning every week. The best month in PickMyWork’s six-year history.
And the founding belief is exactly the same as it was in 2019.
“AI is important. Technology is important. But the person who goes out every day, sells, and builds their own life, that person is equally important. Perhaps more.”
PickMyWork exists so technology empowers people. Not replaces them.
6 years. One question. Thousands of lives.
And this is only the beginning.
