When GreyLabs AI founder Aman Goel and his wife publicly revealed that they had hired a full-time “home manager” at a salary of ₹1 lakh a month, it sparked more than curiosity. This job hire triggered a debate about the economics of time, privilege, and changing domestic norms in urban India.
Goel said the hire “saves us a lot of headache and time,” describing how the manager oversees everything from food planning and wardrobes to repairs, grocery runs, and coordinating household staff.
The conversation became larger than one family’s decision because it mirrors broader shifts in how high-earning professionals are outsourcing household responsibilities. At the same time, it exposes the very real gaps between a tiny segment of premium domestic work and the millions of informal workers who form India’s vast care economy.
A Personal Decision Becomes A Public Talking Point
According to media coverage of Goel’s post, the newly hired home manager is more than a domestic worker; she comes from an operations and hospitality background and functions like a household COO. The couple emphasised that with both of them working full-time while living with elderly parents, the goal was to free up emotional and mental space.
What made the case go viral was not the idea of hiring help, but the salary. A whopping sum of ₹1 lakh per month for domestic management is unusual even in affluent urban households, and journalists framed it as a sign of how India’s elite families are professionalising their home life in ways once common only in luxury hospitality.
When Our Mothers Did It for Freee…
For decades, the deep organisational labour of running a home, planning meals, coordinating repairs, caring for family, organising everything around the household, was mostly done by mothers, without any pay or formal role.
That work rarely made it into economic calculations, because society treated it as a “natural” duty of women rather than actual labour. However, when the same tasks start being outsourced as a “full-time home manager” job, it forces us to reckon with how undervalued that invisible work has always been.
The data strongly support this. According to the 2024 Time Use Survey by India’s Ministry of Statistics, women spend 289 minutes a day, nearly five hours, on unpaid domestic services, compared to just 88 minutes for men.
And when it comes to caregiving for children, the elderly, or the sick, women aged 15–59 dedicate on average 137 minutes daily, while men in the same age group spend only 75 minutes. (MoSPI)
These gaps are not marginal; they highlight how deeply the “mental load” and physical burden of family coordination fall on women.
Even as some share of this burden is gradually shifting, the survey shows that the average time women spend on unpaid domestic work has dropped from 315 minutes in 2019 to 305 minutes in 2024; the imbalance remains stark. (MoSPI)
At the same time, only 25% of women aged 15–59 are engaged in “employment-related activities” on a given day, compared to 75% of men, according to the same survey. This suggests that as more women enter the workforce, the unpaid household burden has not disappeared; it’s just being redistributed in the form of paid roles for some.
Feminist scholars argue that what we’re seeing is not just a market shift but a cultural reckoning. Research shows that this “free” labour was never free because it was invisible, women didn’t count it as work, and society didn’t value it as economic activity.
In fact, studies suggest that gender norms, not just economic inequality, are a core reason behind why women do more unpaid household work than men.
When we start paying people to do what our mothers did, we are finally putting a monetary value on the work, but that also highlights how devalued it has always been.
The Real Size Of India’s Domestic Workforce
While one high-profile hire captured headlines, the data shows the domestic workforce at large is massive, one of the biggest informal labour segments in India.
Government labour portals have registered tens of millions of unorganised workers, including several crore domestic and household workers. These registration drives highlight just how large and predominantly female the sector is.
NSSO data shows that over 75% of domestic workers have no formal contracts or benefits. Independent assessments by labour economists and international organisations show wide-ranging estimates, partly because the work is often invisible and unrecorded.
But all sources agree on one point: domestic labour is an enormous, under-recognised workforce with weak legal protection and very little bargaining power.
The Gap Between A ₹1 Lakh Home Manager And Reality
Official labour surveys consistently report that a majority of informal workers in India earn less than ₹10,000 per month. Domestic workers often fall into the lowest wage brackets, particularly those working without contracts.
In this context, the ₹1 lakh salary stands out as an extreme outlier, placing the role in line with middle-management salaries in organised sectors.
Job-market data shows that “home manager” or “household executive” roles exist, especially in metros, but they typically pay within a few tens of thousands per month, depending on experience.
Salaries reaching a lakh or more are usually reserved for professionals with backgrounds in hospitality, operations, or hotel management, a tiny fraction of the overall domestic workforce.
This creates a visible two-tier market: one dominated by low-wage care workers, and another by rare, high-skill household managers.
Also Read: ResearchED: Every Second Call Received By Women’s Helpline Number Is About Domestic Violence
Legal Blind Spots And The Limits Of Registration
Several government initiatives have improved the visibility of domestic workers by bringing them onto national labour databases. But registration does not guarantee minimum wages, paid leave, contractual protections, or social security. Domestic work in India still lacks a unified national law governing wages and working conditions.
Labour economists frequently warn that formalisation is progressing unevenly. While data collection and social protection schemes are expanding, there is still no standard contract for domestic work, and enforcement remains weak.
Without stronger regulation, the domestic labour market risks becoming further polarised, with one small segment of workers enjoying formal benefits while the majority remain unprotected.
Who Benefits From High-End Household Management?
At a micro level, the benefits are clear: affluent households that place a high economic value on their time gain predictable, hotel-like management of their homes. Skilled workers with hospitality backgrounds may also benefit, leveraging their professional expertise into a niche, well-paying role.
But the distributional impact is uneven. The wages and conditions of the larger domestic workforce remain unchanged by the rise of these premium roles. Data on informal worker incomes, particularly for women, show persistent vulnerability, limited mobility, and very low average earnings.
Unless policy reforms extend upward mobility, only a tiny percentage of domestic workers will ever access the kind of pay associated with high-end household management.
Is This Iconic, And Is It Right?
Culturally, the story has become iconic because it symbolises the aspirations and contradictions of modern urban India: professional ambition, shrinking leisure time, reliance on domestic labour, and the desire to outsource the complexities of home life.
The media highlighted it as an example of treating the household like a professionally managed enterprise.
But whether it is “right” is complicated. On the one hand, paying a high salary for skilled work is ethically sound and can be empowering if the employment terms are formal, respectful, and well-defined.
On the other hand, the fact that this case is extraordinary rather than typical highlights how far India still falls short of providing dignity, fair pay, and legal protection to most domestic workers. Without broader structural reform, high-profile premium hires risk becoming symbols of privilege rather than catalysts for change
The ₹1 lakh-a-month home manager is not representative of India’s domestic labour landscape; it is a data example that reveals deeper tensions. It shows how affluent professionals are redefining domestic management and how skilled household roles can be valued at par with corporate jobs.
At the same time, it highlights the stark inequalities within the domestic workforce, where most workers remain low-paid, informal, and legally vulnerable.
If India wants such stories to signal progress rather than privilege, the path forward lies in strengthening domestic worker laws, formal contracts, minimum wage enforcement, and real career-mobility pathways.
Only then can a well-paid home manager be seen as part of a system of dignity and opportunity, not an exception that proves the rule.
Unless we address the bigger system, we’re at risk of celebrating a solution for the privileged while ignoring the millions of women who continue to carry out similar work without pay or recognition.
The question isn’t just whether this model is efficient. The real question is whether it pushes us toward valuing all care work, and not just the parts that can be outsourced by the wealthy.
Images: Google Images
Sources: The Economic Times, The Times of India, NDTV
Find the blogger: Katyayani Joshi
This post is tagged under: urban lifestyles, domestic labour, unpaid work, gender roles India, working couples India, home management, work life balance, Indian families, feminist economics, invisible labour, time use survey India, domestic workers rights, urban India trends, modern households India, caregiving economy, household inequality, labour valuation India, women and work, startup culture India, professional life balance
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