About 1000 Blinkit Delivery Executives Join Rivals

Zomato’s quick commerce platform Blinkit has reportedly witnessed over 1000 delivery executives joining its competitors such as Swiggy Instamart, Zepto and BB Now. The development has come on the back of the delivery executives’ protest against Blinkit’s changed payout structure. 

As per an ET report, prior to the strike, Blinkit had more than 3000 delivery partners working in Delhi-NCR. Within a week into the strike, about one-third of its delivery executives joined other quick commerce companies. 

“It is difficult to pinpoint how many would be there with Blinkit now because the company has been signing on new delivery workers as well in the last week,” the source told ET.

The development comes a few days after quick commerce platforms including BigBasket, Zepto and Instamart witnessed about 25-50% increase in their daily orders owing to the strike led by Blinkit delivery executives.  

It is prudent to note that earlier this month, Blinkit altered its payout structure for delivery executives, slashing the fixed incentive of INR 25 to INR 15 per delivery. Unhappy with the move, the delivery executives held strikes across Delhi-NCR.

Due to the protest, more than 100 of its dark stores were temporarily shut across Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Greater Noida and Faridabad. 

Recently, Indian stock exchanges also sought a clarification from Zomato on the financial impacts due to the protest. On this, Zomato issued a statement saying that the disruption (strike) would have less than 1% impact on the company’s revenue.

“Over the last few days we have made changes in the delivery partner payout structure with respect to the Blinkit business to address the needs of delivery partners, improve customer experience and reduce cancellation/ order rejection frauds by few delivery partners in the system. Such changes are done from time to time, as needed,” said Zomato in the statement. 

Blinkit’s parent firm Zomato further informed that most of these stores have also resumed operations.

Earlier, ICICI Securities said the strike can result in a 1% drop in Blinkit’s revenue and a 0.15% fall in its consolidated revenue. 

“We estimate Blinkit has been operating 370 dark stores pan-India as of Q3FY23. It implies 25% of the dark stores are currently not operational. Given that at least 3-4 days’ sales have been lost, it implies ~1% loss in revenue from Blinkit and 0.15% of consolidated revenue in Q1 of FY24, already,” ICICI Securities said in its statement.