Dunzo Down In Several Bengaluru Areas Amid Salaries Delays Of Off-Roll Workers

The beleaguered quick commerce unicorn Dunzo has found itself in yet another predicament as several workers at two of its dark stores did not return to work following delays in the payment of their July salaries.

The dark stores at Bengaluru’s Koramangala and ITI Layout were unserviceable as of Tuesday (August 15) afternoon. Per sources cited by YourStory, around 70 off-roll workers at seven Dunzo dark stores in Bengaluru saw their July salaries delayed.

However, Dunzo said the service was down due to a shift from Dunzo-owned dark stores to partner stores in certain parts of Bengaluru. “We are live in more than 95% of our geos in Bangalore, except in a couple of areas where we are transitioning to partner stores over the long weekend. We should be operational in these areas as well within the next 24 hours,” a Dunzo spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said Dunzo has built a hybrid network of stores for its D2C offering, Dunzo Daily, adding that the network is a combination of dark stores and partner stores. “This network is dynamic and continues to evolve – where it makes business sense for us to have partner stores, we will switch to that model,” the spokesperson added.

The quick commerce unicorn did not divulge any information regarding the payments of the off-roll workers.

To be sure, Dunzo has been shutting down dark stores across the country for the past few months, as it has reverted to its original operating model – partnering with established stores for products while the startup supplied tech and logistics support in a revenue-sharing model.

However, while the startup did not divulge any details on the payment of the off-role workers, the YS report noted that several dark stores could have been down on Tuesday, only for other off-role workers and delivery teams to take over operations at these dark stores except for the two mentioned before.

The off-role workers, which are involved in packing and handling orders, were supposed to be paid for July by the first week of August, but they have not received their salaries, leading them to not return to work on Tuesday.

The development comes as Dunzo had already deferred the salaries of their regular employees to September amid severe cash flow problems at the startup. The problems have also prompted the quick commerce unicorn to hold talks with its debt investors to restructure the terms of the credit to address the issue.