They need jobs. Gig work apps say they’re too old

When Rasamany Vettivelu opened her Grab Driver app on her 75th birthday, three years ago, she was not met with a congratulatory note. Instead, the super-app announced it was terminating her contract: She was now too old to work on the platform. In fact, she’d been too old for years. Grab’s age limit for its drivers in Malaysia is 69; Vettivelu joined the platform when she was 70.

“I’m quite disappointed that I was not able to get jobs from Grab because I was doing an efficient service for them,” Vettivelu, who lives in Kuala Lumpur, told Rest of World. “I said, how can they simply stop me without telling me and give me enough notice?”

Vettivelu complained, and her story made headline news in Malaysia, where she became known as the “Grab Aunty.” Wee Ka Siong, Malaysia’s former transport minister, personally called Vettivelu to assure her he’d look into the issue. He later told local media the government had no maximum age limit for e-hailing drivers and that platforms should be more flexible. 

In Southeast Asia, where the population is aging rapidly, gig work has emerged as a rare opportunity for retired workers to make a living and stay active. But while major companies like Grab, GoTo, and Sea tout diversity and inclusion goals, their own gig platforms exclude a very particular demographic: older workers. All of these apps set upper age limits for their workers, ranging from 55 to 70 years. The age limits do not appear to be related to local laws, and vary across countries and platforms. With a lack of clear communication on how they enforce these policies, workers above an app’s age limit fall in a gray area, and worry they could have their contracts terminated at any time. 

Minh, 63, had no trouble registering with ShopeeFood in Ho Chi Minh City four years ago, even though the platform has an upper age limit of 55. But with a wife and a grandchild to provide for, he is now worried about getting ousted from the platform. With the number of orders falling due to an economic slowdown and a rising number of gig workers on the road, Minh recently tried to supplement his dwindling earnings by becoming a driver for Grab. Due to the platform’s age limit, however, he was unsuccessful.  

“If [ShopeeFood] lets me go because of age, then I’ll accept that, what else can I do?” Minh told Rest of World, requesting anonymity for fear of getting banned from the platform. “I could try to plead with them that I had worked for them for a long time, my health is good, I don’t break rules.” But eventually, he said, it’s the company’s call. “If they keep me, fine; if not, so be it. I’ll go hungry — I don’t know what other job I can do.”

Some older drivers told Rest of World that a blanket rule based on age is unfair. “They don’t use their brains to consider how a driver should be performing,” said Vettivelu, who was a five-star driver. “They should consider the health condition of the person and how she has been driving, and how careful she was with driving her passengers.”

Others were open to age limits. “Seventy is already too [old] — who can drive till 70?” said Tran Thanh, a 64-year-old Gojek motorcycle driver in Ho Chi Minh City, with a laugh.

In Vietnam, Grab’s age limit for motorbike drivers is 60 years for men and 55 for women; car drivers are limited to 65 years for men and 60 for women. Sea Group’s ShopeeFood only accepts workers up to the age of 55. GSM, the all-electric ride hailing company owned by Vingroup founder Pham Nhat Vuong, has an age limit of 55 years for car taxi drivers, and 60 for bike riders. Ride-hailing and delivery platform Be has no age restrictions, and Gojek’s limit is 70.

Grab declined to comment on individual cases but confirmed it doesn’t onboard new drivers older than the set age limit. “For current driver-partners who eventually hit the local age limit, Grab looks after them as part of a list of senior driver-partners, with regular check-ins on their health and performance,” the company’s spokesperson said. 

“Gojek sets an age limit for driver-partners in order to maximize safety standards,” Gojek Vietnam’s spokesperson told Rest of World. “This limit enables those who are of retirement age but still in good health to have more opportunities to earn additional income.”

GSM sets its age limits based on “market norms,” which show that “the majority of taxi drivers and bike drivers are under 55 and 60 years of age, respectively,” Nguyen Van Thanh, the company’s global CEO, told Rest of World. “GSM established rules aligned with these market norms as drivers are required to have good health to navigate the traffic.” Thanh said around 3% of GSM bike riders are over 50 years old, and that the company would renew contracts of aged-out workers “depending on their health condition, following Ministry of Transport regulations.” 

ShopeeFood and Be did not respond to a request for comment.

“If you look at the provisions in [Vietnam’s] labor code, [platforms] actually do not violate anything” by setting age limits, Giang Thanh Long, a researcher at the National Economics University in Hanoi, told Rest of World.

Meanwhile, in Malaysia, where the population is aging rapidly, older citizens are turning to gig work because it represents a flexible way to earn an income amid the rising cost of living and lack of financial support from adult children, according to Wee Ka Siong, a Malaysian Member of Parliament and the former transport minister.

“E-hailing companies have the discretion and freedom to set their own rules and requirements when they hire their drivers,” Siong told Rest of World. But “disallowing individuals from becoming e-hailing drivers based on their age is just taking an easy way out,” he said. Instead, Siong suggested that making “medical assessment a compulsory requirement is a more effective and efficient way to determine the physical fitness of the drivers.”

Age limits are not unique to gig work platforms: Some traditional taxi companies in Vietnam maintain stricter restrictions, only hiring drivers up to the age of 50 years. 

This is partly because, unlike gig work platforms, traditional taxi companies in the country sign employment contracts with their drivers and are required by law to pay social and health insurance. “The greater the age, the greater the risk of accidents,” Giang Thanh Long, a researcher at the National Economics University in Hanoi, told Rest of World. “So compensation for things like death will be higher” while tech platforms “release all their responsibilities and risks on workers.”

Switching to platform work has allowed taxi drivers in their sixties to continue working, Quyet Nguyen, who runs an agency that helps drivers register with online platforms, told Rest of World. 

Fifty-one-year-old Huynh Thanh Long, in Ho Chi Minh City, wanted to work for a taxi company or a cooperative after he had to quit his old job at an aluminum glass workshop following an occupational accident. But they all turned him down because his age meant high insurance costs, he told Rest of World.  Now, he hails passengers and delivers food on his motorcycle for local platform Be, which doesn’t have an age limit. But the exertion and rainy weather in Ho Chi Minh City are taking a toll on him, prompting him to try to save money to buy a small van and work for delivery platform LalaMove instead.

Le Tam, 61, ferries passengers on his motorcycle for ride-hailing platform Grab, also in Ho Chi Minh City. After Vingroup’s chairman, Pham Nhat Vuong, rolled out the VinFast taxi fleet on the GSM platform, Tam wanted to make the switch. “They only require an 8 million dong ($315) deposit … I have a driver’s license [and] I want something easier,” he told Rest of World. But he was quickly let down because GSM only accepts drivers up to the age of 55.

“If I were to register [with Grab] now, they’d ask about my age,” Tam said. But since he has been with the platform for nearly a decade, he believes Grab wouldn’t drop him because “they value loyalty.” Grab has occasionally checked in with him and gifted him health supplements, though he doesn’t think the offers were age-related.

Unlike in Vietnam and Malaysia, Grab does not have an age limit for its motorcycle riders in Thailand, the second-fastest aging country in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) after Singapore. 

There were already more than 3,700 Grab workers aged over 60 in Thailand in 2022 when the company rolled out “Grab Wai Kao” (“Grab for Old Age”) in collaboration with the Digital Economy Promotion Agency (Depa), a government organization tasked with promoting the use of digital technology. The program was aimed at attracting another 3,000 workers aged 60 or over to join Grab as ride hailing or delivery drivers.

Older workers “are highly capable with vast experience, carefulness, and discretion. Age does not matter to them,” Worachat Luxkanalode, managing director of Grab Thailand, said in a press release announcing the launch of Grab Wai Kao.

Depa was not available for comment while Grab did not respond to Rest of World’s questions about the status of Grab Wai Kao.

Meanwhile, in Singapore, the government stipulates that taxi drivers must be at least 30 years old, meaning the profession is dominated by middle-aged or older men. This is influenced by local perceptions that younger people should be pursuing more profitable careers, and that such restrictions reduce the rate of road accidents, Renyi Hong, a researcher at National University of Singapore, told Rest of World. 

When Uber and other ride-hailing platforms first came to Singapore, they were not bound by the minimum age requirements. Conventional taxi drivers “were pretty upset,” Hong said, prompting the government to levy the same age restriction on platform drivers in 2020.

Older drivers say the platforms aren’t just a way to make money — they also offer them an opportunity to maintain social interactions and stay engaged. For Vettivelu in Malaysia, driving was not only a job but also a way to stay active and feel less lonely.

“It was my flair for driving, my flair to meet people, talk to people” that drew her to sign up with Grab, she said. “Because, you know, if you are at home you don’t talk to anybody. You are in front of the 24-inch TV and wasting a good time.”