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VMPL
New Delhi [India], October 9: For Kabita Singh, returning to paid work did not mean returning to an office. After a career break from banking, she launched Kabitas Kitchen on YouTube in November 2014. In an interview with Slurrp, she explained that her son starting school had given her time to pursue her interest in cooking. Creating videos from home allowed her to turn that interest into a career while remaining present for her family. Her experience illustrates why flexibility matters. Many Indian women need earning opportunities that can fit alongside care and household responsibilities. Home-based services, online businesses and content creation can reduce barriers related to location and scheduling, while video and livestreaming platforms offer ways to earn through skills, creativity and audience engagement. Why flexibility matters for working women Indias 2025 Periodic Labour Force Survey shows a substantial gender gap in labour force participation. Nationally, the rate was 40 per cent for women and 79.1 per cent for men. The difference was widest in urban India, where participation stood at 27.7 per cent for women and 76.2 per cent for men. Domestic responsibilities form part of this context. Indias Time Use Survey 2024 found that women aged 1559 who performed unpaid domestic services spent an average of 305 minutes a day on them, compared with 86 minutes for men. Flexible hours cannot remove every barrier, but they can make earning easier to combine with care responsibilities. How working from home opens up opportunities Working from home reduces commuting time and costs while giving women more control over their schedules. In a randomised Kolkata study summarised by J-PAL, women offered smartphone-based work from home with chosen hours were 33 percentage points more likely to participate than those offered fixed hours at a neighbourhood workplace, where take-up was 14.6 per cent. Remote services and digital content platforms can then help women turn existing skills, knowledge and creativity into earning opportunities beyond their local area. Livestreaming and video creation become new routes to earning Livestreaming, short videos and longer video programmes have become popular forms of content creation in recent years. They give people different ways to reach an audience and build an income. For women seeking flexible work, this opens a broad range of options, from creating recorded material on their own schedule to hosting live sessions at times they choose. The formats suit different strengths. Short videos can introduce creators to new viewers, longer programmes allow them to explore subjects in greater depth, and livestreaming supports direct interaction with returning audiences. YouTube combines these formats through Shorts, longer uploads and live broadcasts. Channels that meet its Partner Programme requirements can access advertising and other income streams, while published videos may continue reaching viewers over time. Kabita Singh shows how content creation can fit around family life. In a 2019 HerStory interview, she described producing three videos a week, often filming them together with support from her husband. Prajakta Koli, interviewed alongside her, worked with a team on writing, editing and marketing. Their experiences illustrate how a creators routine can develop from home-based production into a larger operation with specialised support. Recorded video is not the only way to build an audience from home. Beyond YouTube, livestreaming platforms such as Instagram Live and Chamet offer a more interactive route. As one of Indias leading video chat & livestreaming apps, Chamet provides many Indian women with an additional source of income. According to its published data, more than 50,000 hosts from India were active on the platform in Aug 2026 alone. Hosts can earn from virtual gifts sent by viewers during livestreams and from paid video chats. They choose when to go online, allowing them to build a schedule around family and other responsibilities. Actual earnings vary according to activity, audience engagement and platform rules. Livestreams and Party Rooms also give hosts space to showcase talents such as singing, performing music and storytelling or to lead conversations around shared interests. Regular broadcasts can help them develop a recognisable presence, while video calls allow stronger connections with returning viewers. Its free AI translation also helps hosts reach people beyond their own language communities. During video calls, speech appears as translated subtitles on screen, with support for more than 50 languages. This puts Chamets Make Chat Borderless commitment into practice and gives Indian hosts more opportunities to connect with international audiences. An income of her own can widen a womans choices Earning from home can help women contribute to household expenses, support their children and make more independent financial decisions. It may also give them the confidence to invest in training or develop an activity further. In a 2021 report by The Better India, Babita, a member of Pooja Sharmas food-processing group in Haryana, said her earnings helped pay for her sons schooling and reduced her reliance on her husband for personal needs. Control over income also matters: an Indian experiment described by Innovations for Poverty Action found that women who received public works wages directly into their own accounts, together with account-use training, increased their labour participation compared with women offered accounts alone. Kabita Singhs experience shows how YouTube can turn time available at home into an audience and a long-term creator activity. Chamet offers a different model: women can host livestreams, showcase their talents and connect with audiences through video chats, with opportunities to earn from virtual gifts and audience interaction. Together, these platforms show that earning from home can be more than a way to fit work around existing responsibilities. It can help women turn their knowledge, creativity and ability to connect into incomeand gain greater control over what comes next. (ADVERTORIAL DISCLAIMER: The above press release has been provided by VMPL. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of the same)
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