SUMMARY
As per BJP leader Yashpal Batra, the Labour Commissioner has directed executives of Blinkit to address the issues of its delivery partners by April 17
The strike has rendered over 100 dark stores of Blinkit across Delhi-NCR non-operational for the past three days
Blinkit riders are protesting against the new pay structure, which they claim slashes their delivery fees to INR 14 per order from INR 50 earlier
Backing protesting Blinkit delivery executives, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson from Haryana, Yashpal Batra, met Gurugram Labour Commissioner Dinesh Kumar and sought immediate redressal of their grievances.
As per Batra, the Labour Commissioner has directed executives of the company to address the issues by April 17.
This comes close on the heels of the BJP leader shooting off a letter to Gurugram Deputy Labour Commissioner seeking redressal of grievances of the delivery partners of the quick-commerce platform.
“I spoke to the Deputy Labour Commissioner to address the grievances of the delivery executives around slashing of delivery fees for these riders and to restore the blacklisted drivers. Let’s see how they respond…We will wait for their decision and then accordingly decide the next course of action,” Batra told Inc42.
Quoting protesting drivers, Batra’s letter noted that the quick-commerce company has slashed the delivery fees to INR 14 per order from INR 50 earlier.
“I have received complaints from the delivery executives that injustice is being meted out to them by Zomato and Blinkit. I request you (Deputy Labour Commissioner) to resolve the matter at the earliest,” said the letter seen by Inc42.
Batra also claimed that more than 15,000 to 20,000 delivery executives across Haryana in Gurugram, Faridabad, Palwal and other areas are protesting against the foodtech giant.
Presenting its side of the story, a Blinkit spokesperson said, “We have introduced a new payout structure for our partners that compensates them based on their effort to deliver an order. This is an opt-in exercise, and our teams are on the ground to answer any questions from the partners. We believe this is a positive step for our partner ecosystem, as it is fair to them and our customers. Although some locations have experienced disruptions, we are actively engaging with our partners to get the stores back up and running for our customers.”
The strike has impacted the operations of Blinkit in Gurugram as reportedly more than half of the 200 dark stores run by the company across Delhi-NCR have not been operational for the past three days. Sources told The Economic Times that a bigger number of dark stores are expected to go offline in the Delhi-NCR region in the next few days as the startup rolls out the new pay structure to other parts of Noida and Delhi.
Meanwhile, customers of the app have been left high and dry, not being able to place orders. For customers looking to access the quick-commerce platform, the app shows most stores in Gurugram, Delhi and Noida as being unavailable.
Many customers took to Twitter to vent out their frustration and lash out at the quick-commerce platform.
The delivery riders are expected to continue their strike over the coming days, as per ET. Meanwhile, Inc42 has learnt that the foodtech major is expected to continue with the rollout of the new payment structure and is in regular touch with protesting drivers to resolve the matter.
Troubles Galore At Blinkit
At the centre of the fracas is Blinkit’s new payout structure under which riders will have to book their time slots and will accordingly be compensated on a per kilometer basis. A company source said that the new regime could help streamline the number of delivery riders on a particular route based on peak and non-peak delivery hours and will accordingly ensure similar payouts, as before, for the drivers.
On the other hand, the protesting delivery executives claim that Blinkit reduced per order fees from INR 50 to INR 25 some time back, and now to INR 15 per order. The partners are demanding revocation of the new pay structure and have said that all changes in the fee structure should be made with active consultation with workers in the future.
The stir adds another problem to Blinkit’s long list of troubles. From mounting losses to a trademark case, the Zomato-owned company has found itself in the news for all the wrong reasons over the last year or so.
The quick-commerce vertical contributed an adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) loss of INR 227 Cr to Zomato’s financials in the quarter ended December 2022. It also saw its average order value (AOV) tank 2.6% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) to INR 553 in Q3 FY23 from INR 568 in the previous quarter.
The parent company Zomato has also been under fire lately amid a degrowth in numbers and poor performance on an index that rated startups based on the working conditions of their gig workers. As per Fairwork India Ratings 2022, Zomato scored just 4 points out of 10 on the back of not so great treatment of its gig workers.
This is not Zomato’s first tryst with worker protests. Previous occasions have seen drivers from states and UTs such as Delhi, West Bengal, Ladakh, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu and Telangana take to streets to protest against unfair working conditions and low wages.
The stir has again shone the light on the growing gig economy which continues to see protests for wages and better working conditions. As per NITI Aayog, the number of gig workers in the country is projected to surge to 23.5 Mn by 2030 from 7.7 Mn workers in 2021.
