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Analyses of labour contracting crucially inform studies of labour informalization and precarious work in industrial systems and production networks. Challenging conceptualizations emphasizing contractors’ intermediary role, and drawing from debates on petty commodity production and interlocking, this article analyzes labour contractors in the home-based embroidery sector in Bareilly, India. It shows that these are informal capitalists, rather than intermediaries. Workers’ precariousness is not due to intermediation, but to the way in which surplus extraction is secured interlocking labour and credit markets, and broader realms of social reproduction. Interventions targeting intermediation may not always ameliorate the lives of the working poor.