Salaried professionals contribute 9 times the revenue for Airlines as compared to the average flying consumer, books 15 to 20 times as many hotel nights, 35 times to app-based taxis, consumes 13 times as many cups of coffee, and places 27 times as many quick-commerce orders. This segment is defined by this central characteristic: They are ‘money-rich, time-poor’. A brand (or employer) that saves them time earns their preference aside from obviously, revenue.
Rajeev, an average Indian white-collar professional. As a consumer, two taps bring his cab to the society gate. His app-ordered coffee comes as quickly. Groceries arrive in six minutes in the evening. Check in at Airports via Digi Yatra are brilliant. Cancelled dinner? Refunds were processed swiftly too. My god, India has developed!
10am through till 7pm, Rajeev is a white collar employee at a large corporate. He marks attendance in an app that looks boring, experience is tedious and sometimes crashes. Later, he takes a client to lunch: ₹1,850. Filing for reimbursement, anything above ₹500 needs prior approval. He had forgotten this. A colleague reminds him. He sends an email to his boss for approval for an expense he has already incurred. Thankfully, the approval comes a day later. He then painfully uploads a photograph of the bill and enters data about the client and meal in dialog boxes and dropdown where he sees F&B and Client Outing as two separate options and attaches his boss’s mail. The claim form in their tool had only 17 fields per claim. This is just one bill. He has over 40 bills from last month. All stacked in the sleeve of his laptop bag. He spent 3 hours doing last months’ bills. Before filing them, he dreaded this task – procrastinating for the last two weeks – all this while, the overhang of over 60K in claims was playing in his mind.
Rajeev creates consumer experiences that run like clockwork but remains trapped in workplace systems from 2005. As a consumer, he’s a celebrity on a red carpet; as an employee, red tape yanks that carpet away. The contrast couldn’t be starker.
The cost exceeds the hour uploading receipts. Behavioural research by Sophie Leroy (2009) and productivity studies by Microsoft show every 60 minutes of administrative tasks triggers over 60 mins lost worrying about the task (and procrastinating) plus 17 minutes of cognitive residue following task completion—137 minutes of productivity loss per 60 mins of administrative chore. For India’s 30 million white-collar professionals, that’s a ₹5,100 crore monthly productivity drain (at ₹850/hour output value). This “time tax”consumes 32-40 hours per employee annually, worth ₹27,000–₹34,000 per person.
Individuals forfeit ₹1,200 yearly in rejected claims, lose ₹6,000–₹10,000 in delayed reimbursement interest, and sacrifice mental health navigating outdated systems. Organizations face dual losses: ₹18,000–₹22,000 per employee in lost creative output, plus 3-5%revenue leakage through fraud-prone workflows and missed GST credits worth ₹2,000–₹5,000 per employee. Treasury teams without real-time visibility miss sweep yields worth ₹50 lakh to ₹2 crore annually. At the national level, India suffers ₹1.8–₹2.1 lakh crore in GDP drag while talent focuses on manual compliance rather than enabling growth.
Imagine instead: Rajeev accepts a calendar invite for an out-station client meeting. on his phone, he seamlessly receives recommendations for flights, hotels, cabs that are compliant with company policy, in line with his preferences and optimised for cost/budgets. Once he confirms, his flight is booked instantly, hotel room confirmed, and airport cabs scheduled. Corporate rates apply automatically, GST input credits and cost codes mapped correctly. Approvals in place, reimbursements will be automated, reports for finance will be real-time and accurate- no operational hassles, no errors, and best of all no mental load.
While this is an example for corporate expenses, from payroll systems to enterprise HCM’s to monitor attendance, rewards and recognition- all these systems need a complete overhaul. Systems will get connected, experience personal and company compliant. This is the future.
It’s time to bring the consumer experience behind the ‘corporate firewall’. In today’s competitive landscape, as AI enhances productivity like never before, time saved from administrative tasks will provide the competitive edge. And, personal experiences will produce brand and employer loyalty like never before.
(The author, Vibhore Goyal, is the founder & CEO of OneBanc.)
