RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – According to the survey, with the growth recorded over last year, Brazil now registers approximately 20% of its adult population – equivalent to 32.4 million people – using some app to work. In February last year – that is, before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic – this share stood at 13%.
Locomotiva’s research heard 1,500 people from a sample selected through the National Household Sample Survey (Pnad), an indicator from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) that serves as a parameter of the socioeconomic characteristics of Brazil. The interviews were conducted between March 12th and 19th.
The institute’s method includes the apps that directly capture service providers – such as transportation and delivery services – and tools that indirectly contribute for companies and professionals to communicate or capture new customers in the virtual world.
The president of Locomotiva, Renato Meirelles, says that the size of the dependence on these technology platforms was beyond the survey creators’ expectations. “It is a huge number. The data includes Brazilians with no income and who couldn’t live on emergency aid alone. This shows that apps have become the biggest employers in Brazil today,” he says.
In times of social isolation, says Meirelles, apps have helped entrepreneurs contact customers and deliver their products. “It’s not just about underemployment. The apps have helped a lot so that several companies have been able to stay afloat. There has been a strong process of digitalization in the pandemic, and that is a path of no return.”
Tools
Among the most used tools for those who use technology to find an activity, 34% of the interviewees mentioned social network apps, such as Facebook, and 33%, messaging apps, such as WhatsApp.
Also included are transportation tools, such as Uber and 99, used by 28% of those who accessed the apps to obtain work or income. On the other hand, 26% resorted to online sales technologies, such as Mercado Libre and Magazine Luiza, and 14% to delivery technologies, such as Rappi, iFood, and Uber Eats.
The survey also shows the relevance of applications in the total income of thousands of people. Of the 32.4 million Brazilians who have income via apps, 16% said that this had been their only source of income, and another 15% said that apps account for half of their earnings (see chart above).
The apps, however, are also used as a kind of “odd jobs”. For 24% of respondents, apps are just an occasional job used to boost a business’s sales that exist outside the virtual world, for example.
Leap in demand
Apps have felt the surge in demand amid the economic downturn. The vice president of finance and strategy of the delivery application iFood, Diogo Barreto, says that the number of orders through the application went from 30 million before the pandemic to 48 million at the end of last year.
The total number of establishments connected to the app went from 150,000 to 230,000 in the same comparison. Barreto says that “niche” restaurants, such as vegans, which previously preferred to stay out of iFood, entered the application. Others, such as steakhouses that worked on the “all you can eat” system, reinvented their business to work with delivery.
The iFood executive also says that other establishments also surfed the wave, such as bakeries, which started selling pizzas or delivering other food items to guarantee extra revenue.
Despite this growth in demand, Barreto says that the company decided not to expand the number of delivery people in the same proportion. The strategy was adopted to avoid a drop in the professional delivery drivers’ income. Because of this, during these 12 months of the pandemic, the total of registered professionals grew at a much slower pace, from 150,000 to 160,000.
Change is here to stay
The FEA/USP professor and specialist in Labor Market, Wilson Amorim, highlights that technology, in the current world, “directs the productive process” and affects labor relations. “What we have is an inescapable reality. These companies are now part of modern life’s landscape, being in the middle of the path between supply and demand for products and services as an intermediary.”
From the expert’s viewpoint, it is necessary to look at the mobile app phenomenon from two perspectives. At the same time that apps bring alternative employment opportunities. On the other hand, they offer little bargaining power for those who provide services or make sales on their platform.
The coordinator of the economics graduation course at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), Joelson Sampaio, highlights that, with the restriction and mobility measures imposed by the need to contain the infection rates of Covid-19, the apps had the role of minimizing the negative impact of the crisis for many families.
“Several companies and families are using the apps as a form of direct income. Some people are working in logistics, such as delivery people, but that’s not all. Many small entrepreneurs started to use the apps to make their businesses viable,” he says.
Long term goal
At the beginning of the pandemic, Weidson Barbosa da Silva worked in an outsourced company of Ambev, with the installation and maintenance of ice machines, soft drinks, and draft beer makers. In April, he was surprised by a dismissal because the company’s initial speech had been that measures to reduce working hours and salary would be adopted to ensure the maintenance of work.
“As a family father, I went into despair. We know that finding a job is complicated. My only solution was to start working with apps,” says Weidson, father of two girls, one 9 years old and the other 2.
At the beginning of his work with deliveries, Weidson says that the new experience was difficult – still without a score in the application, the days were very long, and, in the end, he always had little money to take home.
“In the beginning, it was very complicated to raise the score. In this pandemic, my world fell apart and, with the application, I managed to do something. The difficulty that we have on the street is the very long workday, but it is money that has been supplying my needs at home,” he says.
According to him, the working day, often from Sunday to Sunday, involves 18 to 20 hours on the street, since the more deliveries he makes, the more money he can take home.
Close to completing a year of working via application, Weidson says that the situation was improving with the increase of experience, and the work got a little easier. Today, for example, he doesn’t think about abandoning deliveries.
This is because he has already started to come up with a new professional plan. With an eye on the good moment of the Stock Exchange, he is taking a course to become a trader, as the professionals who make money with short-term operations in the Stock Exchange are called.
“I am studying like crazy to give a better quality of life to my daughters and wife. I want financial stability, but the application will be my subterfuge,” says Weidson. He also plans to resume his university studies, which he put off just before the pandemic.
Vegetarian
A popular vegetarian address in Vila Madalena, São Paulo, the restaurant Quincho, run by chef Mari Sciotti, has always focused on local service. Until the beginning of the pandemic, delivery was not an option because the restaurant was always full and with a waiting line.
The perception was that the flow of app deliverers could disturb the local dynamic. “We had plans to work with delivery but had not yet started before the pandemic. We were still studying the best way,” says Mari.
With the business hit at the beginning of the pandemic, when the restaurant had to close its doors – a situation that is being repeated today – the solution was to start selling customers some dishes that had to be ordered in advance and delivered by the employees themselves. Later on, Quincho entered the apps.
Over time, says Mari, dishes that could better “travel” to the customer were tested, and the ideal packaging for delivery, which reflected the purpose of the house, took time and money. “We understood the problems of transportation, temperature… These are operational issues that you begin to understand as you start serving.”
The decision had not been made before because, due to the volume of orders coming from the restaurant’s own lounge, the kitchen was already overloaded. “We were building a production kitchen to meet the delivery demand, but with the pandemic, we had to launch it in a hurry,” she says. When the restaurant is open, in the pandemic’s milder phases, delivery accounts for about 20% to 30% of revenues.
Understanding that delivery will be a relevant part of the revenue in the longer term, Quincho is in the final phase of its industrial kitchen installation for deliveries. It will be from there that the restaurant’s dishes will be made, plus a line of frozen food. To become less hostage to apps – sales made through them reduce the revenue of the dish sold by about 30% -, Mari says that a delivery project is already being developed on a larger scale.
Source: Infomoney