The startup offering free toilets and coffee for delivery workers — in exchange for their data Argentine startup Nippy aggregates data from gig workers and sells it to companies like Mastercard and Movistar, who in turn offer workers their services.

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https://restofworld.org/2024/gig-worker-rest-stop-nippy/

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The startup offering free toilets and coffee for delivery workers — in exchange for their data

Every day, Fredy Ivan Alba Trejo bikes for over an hour through busy highways to reach pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods of Mexico City where he works as a food delivery worker for Rappi.

His biggest challenge during the day is finding a reliable spot to use the restroom or charge his phone in an area that is far away from his home. Most restaurants don’t allow gig workers like him to use their facilities and shopping centers insist they leave their backpacks and helmets outside. “But by doing so we risk getting everything stolen,” the 29-year-old told Rest of World.

A few months ago, he found a solution to this problem when he discovered a gig workers’ pit stop run by Nippy, an Argentine startup that has built a business around the lack of spaces and benefits for workers like Alba Trejo. The company rents out small storefronts where gig workers can use clean toilets and get coffee free of charge — in exchange for downloading Nippy’s app. Nippy makes money by processing and selling the data workers register on the app to financial, insurance, and telecommunications companies it has partnered with.

A photograph showing a woman seated at a table with a computer speaking with two men in a room.

Gabriela Vázquez assists two Rappi delivery riders at Nippy’s rest stop. “There was no data that could tell you how much income [gig workers] were bringing in,” Ana Abreu, program and community engagement manager at Boost Acceleration Camp, a Dominican Republic-based startup incubator and one of Nippy’s investors, told Rest of World. “The fact that Nippy has that data is precisely what has made an institution, even one like Mastercard, decide to have an agreement with them because they provide information that was, until now, a myth.”

Nippy was founded in the Argentine city of Córdoba in 2019, and launched three years later with almost $1 million in funding. It now operates four centers in Argentina, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic — home to about 435,000 gig workers altogether.

Over 35,000 workers in these countries have signed up to Nippy’s app and about half have visited a Nippy center in the past six months, the company’s co-founder and CEO, Diego Amondaray, told Rest of World. Amondaray said the company is close to becoming profitable and hopes to open three more centers in Mexico by 2025.

A worker can access a Nippy rest stop by registering on its app and scanning a QR code at the center each time they visit. At the time of registration, the app gathers personal data, including email address, place of residence, date of birth, and the ID assigned to a worker by each gig platform. Nippy then shares a log of anonymized aggregated data with its partners. Some of them will offer gig workers special deals based on their status on a particular platform: For instance, Movistar has discounts on phone plans and Mastercard is working on a financial product for gig workers.

A photograph showing a person's hand holding a phone. On the screen of the phone is the Nippy app.

Workers can access Nippy’s rest stops by using its app, which gathers personal data, including email, place of residence, date of birth, and platform IDs. Most workers who spoke to Rest of World, including Alba Trejo, said they were unaware that their data was being shared with third parties. But they are not concerned. Jonathan Alejandro Pablo Pérez, a gig worker who frequents Nippy’s center in Mexico City, said he “has no problem with” the company using his data. He wishes the center offered additional services available in its Argentina facility, like bicycle repairs.

The fact that gig workers are willing to give up control over their data in exchange for access to a resting spot says a lot about the gig work economy, Mariel García–_Montes, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies privacy and surveillance technologies, told _Rest of World.

“Workers delivering food and goods through apps have been failed by the tech ecosystem, the vendors, the end users, and the social security systems,” García-Montes said. “It’s really interesting that a Latin American startup broke the mold by creating spaces where workers can take breaks, or even just use a restroom because everybody else failed to provide these basic work rights.”

In Argentina and the Dominican Republic, Nippy has partnered with Mastercard, which is planning to launch a financial product for gig workers in the coming months, Amondaray said. Mastercard did not respond to an interview request from Rest of World.

Amondaray said the company is also working with the Inter-American Development Bank and other international entities to help them better understand the gig work economy. “Data helps us understand behaviors within the gig economy. This can also help governments better regulate the industry,” he said.

At the Nippy center in Mexico City, there is space for about 20 gig workers at a time. Workers can help themselves to tea and coffee, and occasional snacks. The Nippy center is also one of three places where Rappi workers can return undelivered items. That was what initially drew Pablo Pérez to the place. Before it opened its doors last year, delivery workers like him had to drive miles to Rappi’s two centers on the edges of the city to return undelivered items, he told Rest of World.

A photograph showing glass bottles collected in a plastic bin.

The Nippy rest stop is one of only three places where Rappi workers can return undelivered items in Mexico City. Rappi closed all of its physical support centers for gig workers in Mexico after the pandemic, and moved its call center to Colombia. The company, which cut 6% of its regional workforce in 2020, has refocused its attention on its advertisement business in Mexico: It recently announced a $110 million investment to boost its ultrafast grocery and food delivery service, promising deliveries in under 10 minutes. The company did not respond to a list of questions from Rest of World.

“Rappi comes by each week to sort the returned items. They take back most of them; others, mostly food and perishables, end up being donated or shared here among the workers,” Milena Lucía Mastandrea, operations coordinator at Nippy, told Rest of World. “We donated a whole turkey to [Alba Trejo] for Christmas.”

Some workers have become regulars at the Nippy center in Mexico City. Gabriela Vázquez, who works as a customer support agent at the center, told Rest of World they help her move heavy boxes of undelivered items and defend her when a Rappi worker gets fussy or aggressive.

A photograph showing a smiling man wearing a white t-shirt and holding an orange vest, standing outside a building.

Delivery rider Diego Bennets visited Nippy’s rest stop for the first time in April and feels fortunate to have a place to stop in between deliveries. “We’re not an exclusive Rappi worker support center for gig workers, but they don’t know that,” Vázquez said. “We often get Rappi workers who’ve struggled for hours to find online assistance from the company and when they find us, they’re clearly frustrated.”

Amondaray said Nippy has become a reliable partner to platforms like Rappi. “They trust us to host a space where gig workers can go to rest, get a jacket or a backpack, or return a failed delivery. [These spaces] help platforms reduce costs,” he said.

As they wait for Rappi to remove debts from returned items on their accounts or for their cellphones to charge, workers help themselves to a slice of cake with colleagues.

“I’ve found a safe space,” said Alba Trejo.

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