Indian food delivery platform Zomato bought Blinkit, previously known as Grofers, last year.
Around 50 stores of instant delivery provider Blinkit have been shut as bike riders halted work to protest for better wages. Several delivery riders in Delhi and across Delhi-NCR have coordinated the protest via WhatsApp groups to rollback the latest payout scheme.
According to a Reuters report, the majority of the 50 affected stores are in and around New Delhi. Meanwhile, the Blinkit app displays a “temporarily unavailable” message for several users in the country’s capital.
Last week, riders of the 10-minute grocery delivery startup went on strike across Delhi, Gurugram, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, and Noida. Workers protested that Blinkit, which competes with Reliance-backed Dunzo, Tata’s BigBasket, and SoftBank-backed Swiggy, has reduced the per delivery payout to the rider from Rs 50 to Rs 25 and now Rs 15 (plus a distance-based fee).
The delivery drivers demanded the company to rollback its revised payout structure, which is resulting in decreased earnings for the gig workers. Meanwhile, Zomato, which acquired Blinkit last year, said that the revised pay structure compensates the riders based on their efforts, according to the Reuters report. The Zomato added that it was engaging with the riders to reopen the shut stores.
Indian food delivery platform Zomato bought Blinkit, previously known as Grofers, last year for Rs 4,447 crores (or $568 million) to take advantage of quick commerce. The company also bought Grofers’ warehousing and ancillary services business.
Meanwhile, the latest protest brings the struggling gig workers working in the quick commerce industry, a business model that emphasizes faster deliveries of usually less than an hour, into the limelight. A push for better wages by these workers seems like a basic necessity given rising fuel costs, soaring inflation, and the lack of social security offered to the workers.
It is noteworthy that we are talking about the industry of gig workers that includes delivery boys, cleaners, consultants, etc., and the one which is only going to expand in the future. According to a report by PTI, citing a study by NITI Aayog, 77 lakh workers were engaged in India’s gig economy in 2020-21. The workforce is expected to expand to 2.35 crore workers by 2029-30, it added. Hence, it seems safe to say that the requirement for a better and safer work environment for the gig economy is the need of the hour.
