In January 2022, AirAsia CEO Tan Sri Tony Fernandes announced his intention for AirAsia to become Asia’s largest food delivery and ride-hailing company. The move was justified based on the demand for super-app services that have skyrocketed due to the pandemic and social distancing. The rise of multi-service super-apps, in general, has attracted huge interest: Grab was publicly listed with a merger valuation of US$40 billion (RM167 billion), while GoTo, another Southeast Asian multi-service app comprising Gojek and Tokopedia, raised US$1.3 billion ahead of their first initial public offering due later this year.
Yet while the pandemic has bolstered delivery services, it has hit the ride-hailing service and low-cost carriers hard, as people stayed at home and avoided close contact owing to health concerns: AirAsia saw its revenues plummet in places hit hard by the coronavirus. It also reported a quarterly loss of US$5.9 billion in the third quarter of 2021: the largest in a continuous string of losses. Yet the company is still celebrated, with its brand strong enough to raise money to expand into ride-hailing, grocery deliveries and financial services by acquiring Gojek Thailand and other similar platforms across the region.
Part of the reason the company can continue this way is that the core of its business model involves underpriced and precarious labour in the form of the drivers: Many have no constant source of revenue and, as independent contractors and not employees, they cannot apply for any kind of unemployment or government protection. Governments around the world have been offering wage subsidies and cash payments across the harsher months of the pandemic to keep people employed and sustained, yet gig economy workers were often overlooked as their legal status is still debated in many countries — especially Asean, where policymaking has not yet caught on to the business activity of gig-based companies. Worse, as super-app companies pivot to food delivery and self-driving cars, these drivers — many of whom made significant purchases and lifestyle changes to accommodate gig economy demands — risk being made obsolete.
The strains of the gig economy were starting to show even before the pandemic. As far afield as China and the US, stories abounded of the workloads and tight schedules couriers and delivery people needed to operate under. Platforms set strict guidelines on how their workers would operate, penalising any slack in the system. Guidelines were also subject to change, as were the algorithms that would promote particular providers over others: There are countless groups of AirAsia Ride drivers, Gojek couriers, Airbnb hosts and YouTube video producers trying to decipher the impenetrable changes to the algorithms that govern their livelihoods. Big Tech is enabling the gig economy, and has for many of these people become the modern-day slave driver in more ways than one. Given the unusual business models of gig-based companies, many have gained their “licence to operate” through what in other business areas would be unethical or illegal terms.
