Convenient, but at what cost? Snabbit under fire as Noida professional alleges maid stole Rs 7,000 watch

NOIDA: A routine housekeeping booking on on-demand home services platform Snabbit turned into a theft complaint this week after a Noida resident alleged that a domestic worker assigned to her home walked off with a Rs 7,000 Titan Raga watch and a lip colour.

Sakshi Saxena, a strategy and market intelligence professional residing in Sector 137, Noida, booked a maid named Payal through Snabbit for three hours of housework. Saxena said she offered the worker water, food and an early release. The watch and lip colour were missing after Payal left.

Saxena posted about the incident on LinkedIn, naming the platform and the locality, and warning residents in Noida against hiring the worker. She blurred the woman’s phone number in the post, citing concern for her safety. “She looks like a childish harmless woman but she is very sharp and deceitful,” Saxena wrote.

The complaint points to a broader concern about the on-demand home services model, which has grown rapidly in Indian cities through platforms including Urban Company, Snabbit and Pronto. These platforms dispatch domestic workers to households on short notice, promising speed and professional vetting.

Saxena said the model’s core mechanic, sending a new and unfamiliar face to a home each time, undermines the trust that domestic work has traditionally depended on. “The lack of trust and new unknown untrusted faces creates a serious problem,” she wrote. “Today it was my watch and my favourite lip colour, tomorrow it could be your home, your stuff.”

Background checks and ratings systems are standard practice across these platforms, but critics argue they offer limited protection once a worker is inside a home. Platform liability in theft cases remains unclear, and consumer redress is often slow.

Snabbit had not responded to the incident at the time of writing.

The stolen watch may be small in value. The question it raises is not.