Blinkit permanently shuts down some dark stores amid delivery workers' strike

Around 2,500 delivery workers of Blinkit have been on a strike since last week in Gurugram, after the company reduced the fixed payouts of per delivery from Rs 25 to Rs 15. More workers are striking against this move in Delhi and Noida.

Zomato-owned quick commerce company Blinkit has told delivery workers, who have been on a strike against the lowering of payouts, that some of its Gurugram dark stores are being shut down permanently.

“Dear Blinkit partner, We thank you for providing your services to customers from your store. You all have not been working at the store for the past 3-4 days, and work has not started despite a lot of talks. That’s why the company is having to shut down this store forever,” the message on the partner app said in a mix of Hindi and English.

“Since this store is being shuttered permanently, we are disabling all of your IDs. For any issue, you can raise a ticket on support,” it added.

Moneycontrol has seen two screenshots of such messages for the Sector 43 ES32 and South City 1 ES30 stores in Gurugram. Although delivery workers said that more such stores are being permanently shuttered, we could not ascertain the exact number.

Of the 31 dark stores that cater to Blinkit in Gurugram, only a handful are operational at the moment with protection from local police and bouncers deployed by the company, a union leader said last week.

Unlike food delivery, where delivery executives may have to fetch orders from multiple restaurants scattered throughout a city, the quick commerce model relies on gig workers assigned to a specific dark store in a neighbourhood from where deliveries are made.

Around 2,500 Blinkit delivery workers have been on strike in Gurugram since last week, after the company reduced the fixed payouts per delivery from Rs 25 to Rs 15. More workers are striking in Delhi and Noida in protest of this move.

Moneycontrol has sent queries to Zomato and Blinkit on the matter. We will update the article with their response when it is received.

According to an industry executive, the hyperlocal delivery sector's modus operandi is to cut delivery fees paid out to riders whenever the volume of orders rises in an area. The companies make a rough calculation such that a delivery worker gets to earn around Rs 15,000 per month in a top metro. This calculation is again based on the assumption that the gig worker is logged on for 10-12 hours per day for 26-27 days a month.

"As the number of deliveries per worker per hour rises when the platforms' total orders in an area grow, the companies look to make their orders more profitable by cutting the payouts per order," the industry executive told Moneycontrol.

Meanwhile, a source close to the developments said that Blinkit will eventually roll out the new rate cards to all of the dark stores in each city where it is present.

Multiple delivery workers said that Blinkit used to pay Rs 50 per order last year to its early batch of delivery workers and Rs 25 per order to those who joined a few months back. On top of the per-order payouts, there also used to be fuel and delivery volume-based incentives, which could go up to Rs 1,400 per week in some cases. The protesting workers are also angry as these incentives have been gradually tapered out.

According to BSE filings of the company, Blinkit delivered 3.2 crore orders to earn Rs 301 crore of revenue in the December quarter, while suffering an Adjusted EBITDA loss of Rs 227 crore.

The company, formerly known as Grofers, was acquired in a Rs 4,447 crore deal by food delivery company Zomato in June last year.