Compiled By: Balakrishnan Narayanan
About Bala: He is the head of analytics at Fibe with over 15 years of experience in the banking and finance industry. At Fibe he builds machine learning and analytical capabilities across risk, marketing, and customer analytics. For his work solving complex business problems, Bala was listed among the top 100 Data Scientists in Asia at Machinecon, Singapore in 2019.
COVID-19 disrupted economies and livelihoods worldwide. At EarlySalary, we wanted to understand how this crisis affected our customers—particularly white-collar migrant professionals who relocate across states or cities for work. Rather than drawing conclusions from assumptions, we analyzed real customer data to reveal how salaried professionals across industries and key urban centers responded to the pandemic. The analysis covered active customers from multiple industries and cities to surface practical insights that could help us serve customers more effectively. Here are the key findings.
Customer Demographics
Since our service targets salaried individuals, the study focused on professionals in metro and major cities such as Bengaluru, National Capital Region (NCR), Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, and Jaipur. Customers in the dataset primarily belonged to nine industry categories:
- IT & ITES, BPOs
- Banking and financial services
- Manufacturing and engineering
- Healthcare
- Manpower and recruiting
- Insurance
- Education
- Retail and automobile
- Online platforms and startups
The largest share of migrant professionals in our sample came from IT & ITES, manufacturing and engineering, and the automobile sectors.
Key Findings
- 22% of our customers managed to return to their hometowns before the nationwide lockdown began on 25 March 2020.
- Migration covered a wide geographic area: customers originating from 19 operational cities moved to more than 200 different cities across the country.
- Bengaluru, NCR, Pune, Chennai, and Hyderabad experienced the highest outbound movement. Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata retained a larger share of their resident workers.
- Young professionals—particularly those aged 25 and under—constituted the highest proportion of movers. The migration rate for people aged 35 and older was less than half that of the youngest group.
City-wise Movement Patterns
Bengaluru
Most movement from Bengaluru was toward other southern cities. Bengaluru showed the largest outflow, likely because many residents work in IT & ITES. Popular destinations included Mysore, Coimbatore, Chennai, and Hyderabad.
Pune
Migration from Pune was largely intra-state, with people moving to or from cities such as Nashik, Mumbai, Aurangabad, and Solapur.
NCR
Movements from NCR tended toward northern cities like Jaipur, Agra, Lucknow, and Kanpur, reflecting broad geographic dispersal within the region.
Hyderabad
Most movement from Hyderabad occurred within a 100-kilometer radius and largely stayed within the state.
Chennai
Movement from Chennai was mainly to other parts of southern India, although some inter-state movement was observed.
Analysis and Implications
Age factor: Younger professionals showed a greater tendency to travel long distances during the crisis, while older workers were less likely to move. This may reflect life-stage differences—older workers are more likely to have established households and prefer to stay put.
Localized patterns: Most migration was regional rather than pan-Indian. People generally moved within familiar zones instead of relocating across distant regions, which suggests job-seeking and social ties remain regionally concentrated.
Sectoral impact: The IT & ITES sector accounted for a large share of migrations back to hometowns. Remote work options in this sector likely made relocation easier compared with industries requiring on-site presence. Cities with strong IT footprints—Bengaluru and Hyderabad—therefore saw substantial outbound movement. This trend could encourage the growth of smaller tech hubs across the country, while lenders and service providers may need to expand coverage beyond traditional metros to reach customers dispersed nationwide.
The pandemic has changed customer behavior, business operations, and credit patterns. Consumers are prioritizing essentials over discretionary spending, and remote work is shifting workforce distribution away from concentrated metro centers toward a more geographically diverse customer base. As these shifts take hold, service providers must adapt to serve a spread-out population efficiently. The EarlySalary team remains committed to supporting customers across the country during this transition.