A Bengaluru bike-taxi ride led Chaarmika Nagalla to an Infosys employee’s side gig

“Am I audible?” was the first question Chaarmika Nagalla heard from a bike-taxi rider on her way through Bengaluru traffic. It sounded, she wrote, more like the opening of an office call.

Nagalla said the rider told her it was his first day on the platform and that he worked full-time in Infosys’ contract management team. He had taken up trips on weekends and early mornings to earn extra money and use his spare time rather than spend it scrolling through social media.

The next day, Nagalla said, another bike rider told her he worked for a B2B event-management company. His reason for taking rides was different: rather than travel home alone after work, he could make a trip with a passenger.

The two encounters, shared in Nagalla’s April 2025 LinkedIn post, offered a small view of how some Bengaluru professionals use time outside their primary jobs. Nagalla also wondered whether the conversations riders find along the way can matter as much as the additional income.