For Mythri Kumar, Co-Founder and CEO of TimBuckDo, the idea of building a platform for student work did not emerge from a boardroom or a conventional startup thesis. It came from personal experience.

When Kumar moved to Bengaluru in 2008 to study at Mount Carmel, she began taking up small jobs at pizza shops and events to support her lifestyle without repeatedly asking her family for money. Years later, during the COVID-19 lockdown, a similar experience unfolded much closer to home. Her younger brother, who had been helping with content, inventory and other tasks during the lockdown, eventually returned to college and began working as a delivery executive.

What initially surprised Kumar became a deeper realisation. Her brother did not necessarily need financial support from his family; he wanted the independence that came from earning his own money. An internship, however, did not solve that need. According to Kumar, internships offered learning and exposure, but not the immediate earning opportunity students were increasingly looking for.

A conversation with another student and his concerned parent reinforced the same observation. Students were not necessarily looking for mentorship or another structured academic experience. They wanted to work, earn and remain engaged.

Kumar started TimBuckDo as a solo founder in 2022, with Apoorv Sharma Prasad joining as co-founder in March 2024. What began as a student gig platform has since evolved into a broader ambition around learning, earning, skills, career discovery and flexible manpower.

Moving Beyond the Traditional Internship Model

TimBuckDo’s core premise challenges the conventional idea that students should remain outside the workforce until graduation.

Kumar believes that a student can be a fresher on paper without necessarily being inexperienced. With students having significant flexible hours alongside their education, she argues that those hours can be used to build practical exposure through real-world work.

The distinction is particularly important in an environment where employers increasingly expect candidates to demonstrate what they can actually do rather than simply present degrees, certificates and training credentials.

For TimBuckDo, part-time work becomes a way to close this education-to-employment gap. Students can take up opportunities in sales, marketing, content creation, design, operations and other areas while continuing their education. By the time they graduate, they may still be fresh graduates, but they do not have to be fresh in experience.

Kumar also points to a cultural barrier in India around students working while studying. In her view, jobs that may appear ordinary, such as working at a pizza shop, can provide lessons in customer behaviour, inventory management, teamwork and the dignity of labour that traditional classrooms cannot replicate.

Building for the “Pink Collar Economy”

The company’s evolution into what Kumar describes as the Pink Collar Economy reflects a broader change in the nature of work.

With AI reshaping job titles and formal employment structures, Kumar expects a future with more work but fewer traditional jobs. In that environment, she believes qualities such as communication, compassion, mindfulness and emotional intelligence will become increasingly valuable alongside technical capabilities.

TimBuckDo 2.0 is being positioned as a consumer-tech layer for this emerging economy.

On one side are individuals and households that need educated, flexible manpower for temporary or recurring requirements. These can range from accompanying an elderly parent to a hospital appointment to childcare, homework assistance, pet care, tutoring or helping with small home businesses.

On the business side, companies can access student talent for short-term and seasonal requirements, including content creation, customer support, inventory management, packing, retail support and other project-based work.

For students, the proposition extends beyond earning. Every gig can potentially become an opportunity to understand their own strengths, experience different working environments and develop both technical and emotional intelligence.

At the heart of the model, therefore, is convenience: connecting demand and supply at the right time, location and skill level.

Making Every Gig Count

TimBuckDo does not view every opportunity simply as a vacant position waiting to be filled. Kumar says the company evaluates opportunities based on the value they can add to a student’s development.

The platform’s opportunities are paid and verified, while employers go through a KYC process. TimBuckDo also assesses the nature of each engagement, including whether it is a one-time task, a project, a multi-hour requirement or a longer-term contract, alongside the skills required.

This approach is intended to ensure that students gain exposure to genuine work rather than being treated simply as inexpensive temporary labour.

Kumar also believes that no on-ground experience is wasted. Whether a student learns how to communicate with customers, manage inventory, operate within a team or perform under pressure, those skills can remain relevant regardless of the student’s eventual career path.

A Marketplace Built Around Return on Time

As TimBuckDo scaled its student and employer network, Kumar says one major insight became clear: both sides of the marketplace ultimately care about the return on their time.

Employers increasingly want reliable, plug-and-play talent that can enter an existing operation and contribute quickly. The requirement varies by business. A small business may need seasonal support, a larger organisation may require temporary project capacity, while retailers and QSRs may need students for short shifts or weekend demand spikes.

This diversity has also allowed TimBuckDo to develop a granular understanding of demand.

A coffee shop’s manpower requirement may differ from that of an ice-cream shop. A home business may require a different kind of support than an individual household. The company’s ability to match students according to skill, location and specific demand forms an important part of its marketplace proposition.

AI Is Changing the Entry-Level Job Market

Kumar sees AI as one of the biggest competitors facing young professionals today.

Unlike traditional competition, AI operates continuously, does not require leave and improves rapidly. For students entering the workforce, simply possessing technical skills may therefore no longer be enough.

Kumar believes emotional intelligence, empathy, authenticity and attitude will become increasingly important differentiators.

She points to the concept of “proof of work” as an emerging form of career currency. A degree or certificate establishes that someone has completed a particular course of study, but actual work provides tangible evidence of how that person performs.

This is also why TimBuckDo focuses on participation rather than lectures. The platform aims to help students understand the changing economy by actually participating in it.

For Kumar, the challenge is not always a lack of ability. She has seen students from both tier-one and tier-three colleges submit strong resumes but fail to understand the organisations they are applying to. In her view, this reflects an attitude gap rather than simply an AI or skills gap.

Scaling a Student-First Marketplace

TimBuckDo has grown significantly since the last set of publicly shared numbers.

Kumar says the platform is expected to cross seven lakh registered users across Android and iOS by the end of August, while its employer network has reached close to 6,000 recruiters. These include individuals, small business owners, MSMEs, QSRs and retail businesses.

However, registrations are not the only metric the company tracks.

Repeat behaviour, particularly among employers, has become a more meaningful indicator of marketplace health. TimBuckDo operates through both a platform-driven model, where employers directly hire students, and a project-management model through which larger corporations work with TimBuckDo to create and scale student opportunities.

The company says approximately 80% of its users are active, while students have an average lifetime engagement of around two years. Since TimBuckDo currently allows only students aged 18 and above to participate, the company has now observed multiple student cohorts move through the platform and eventually graduate.

Interestingly, demand for jobs has consistently exceeded the opportunities available on the platform. That imbalance is helping shape the next phase of TimBuckDo, including the company’s move towards allowing individuals and households to directly access student gig workers.

Building Trust Into the Marketplace

A marketplace involving young, often first-time workers requires a strong focus on safety and trust.

TimBuckDo has built technology-led systems covering KYC verification, employer vetting, student authenticity checks and grievance management. The platform also uses AI to identify potentially inappropriate or discriminatory job listings at an early stage.

The company has established an escalation framework for complaints, defining the relevant point of contact and expected resolution timelines. Kumar says both she and Apoorv remain personally accessible for grievances, while legal, accounting and compliance teams support the company as it navigates the complexities of gig work across different Indian states.

For TimBuckDo, technology is therefore not simply a marketplace-enabling layer. It is also part of the platform’s safety, compliance and quality infrastructure.

From Ideabaaz to a ₹2.7 Crore Fundraise

TimBuckDo’s fundraising journey received significant visibility through Ideabaaz, where the founders pitched the company on national television.

For Kumar, however, the experience delivered more than capital.

The show connected TimBuckDo with actor Pratik Gandhi, who subsequently became the company’s brand ambassador. Kumar says the national television exposure, combined with the show’s digital footprint and eight-language broadcast, created brand visibility that would have been difficult for a startup at its stage to purchase through conventional advertising.

The founders also secured investment commitments through the show, followed by further capital after due diligence. Turbostart’s evaluation, according to Kumar, focused heavily on the founders’ conviction in the model.

Beyond investment, the Ideabaaz relationship has continued through go-to-market opportunities, startup events, panels and other ecosystem initiatives.

The company ultimately closed a ₹2.7 crore fundraise, with the capital being deployed towards team expansion, technology and marketing. Kumar says the association with Pratik Gandhi has also helped strengthen performance marketing, reduce acquisition costs and improve brand trust among both students and employers.

Creating a New Category

Kumar believes TimBuckDo’s long-term opportunity lies in creating a workforce category that has remained relatively underserved.

The Indian labour market is commonly discussed through blue-collar, grey-collar and white-collar segments. TimBuckDo’s proposition sits between these categories, targeting educated, flexible, temporary and on-demand manpower.

The company calls this layer the Pink Collar Economy.

Students, particularly those between 18 and 23 today, can provide businesses and individuals with flexible support while developing their own skills and experience. The use cases can extend from caregiving and pet care to childcare, retail, small business support and household assistance.

Alongside this manpower marketplace, TimBuckDo is also exploring commerce and student-discount initiatives, primarily as mechanisms to strengthen community engagement and platform stickiness.

Learning to Build With Gen Z, Not Just for Gen Z

One of the company’s important lessons came from recognising that it had initially viewed the student market through a millennial lens.

Early communication positioned TimBuckDo heavily against internships. But as the company engaged more deeply with Gen Z, the founders realised that students did not necessarily need to be convinced about hustling. What they needed was clarity, a straightforward roadmap and communication without unnecessary complexity.

That realisation changed how TimBuckDo approached its community.

Kumar believes that a company building for a community cannot operate at a distance from that community. Today, TimBuckDo has more than ten part-timers working within its own office ecosystem at different points across the week or month.

The company also had to defend its category during early conversations with Indian VCs. Without an established precedent for a student-powered gig platform, some investors initially attempted to categorise TimBuckDo as HR tech.

Instead of fitting into an existing category, the founders chose to sharpen their explanation of why the model represented something different.

That process, Kumar says, became one of the strongest tests of the company’s conviction.

Building Towards the First Earning

For Kumar, the ultimate ambition for TimBuckDo is deeply connected to a personal milestone: a student’s first earning.

She believes people may forget many of their first experiences, but their first income is difficult to forget. It represents self-confidence, independence and the emotional satisfaction of earning money through one’s own time and ability.

That is the experience Kumar wants TimBuckDo to become synonymous with.

Over the next five years, the company aims to establish itself as the category creator and leader of the Pink Collar Economy, bringing lakhs of Indian students into the mainstream economy while creating a dependable pool of educated, flexible manpower for individuals and businesses.

Kumar estimates that the Indian convenience market across the country’s top seven to eight cities is currently worth around ₹10,000 crore. TimBuckDo’s stated ambition is to capture close to 30% of that market over the next five years.

The vision, ultimately, extends beyond a student gig platform. TimBuckDo wants to become an everyday convenience layer powered by India’s student workforce—connecting people who need flexible help with young people looking for the opportunity to earn, learn and build their first proof of work.

For a company that began with one student’s desire to earn independently, the ambition is now to reshape how an entire generation enters the world of work.

Interview By: Arushi Agarwal