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….

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 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.

Read more:

Dib, D. (2024, April 15). The startup offering free toilets and coffee for delivery workers — in exchange for their data. Rest of World. https://restofworld.org/2024/gig-worker-rest-stop-nippy/