Strike has no impact: Zomato, Swiggy, Zepto others pay over Rs 100 crore to gig workers amid record high NYE order volumes

Strike has no impact: Zomato, Swiggy, Zepto others pay over Rs 100 crore to gig workers as order volumes touch record-high on NYE

• Food and quick commerce firms paid over Rs 100 crore to gig workers on New Year's Eve.
• Order volumes reach record highs despite calls for delivery worker strikes.
• Payouts rose 30-40 percent compared to regular days due to festive demand

Did our AI summary help?

Food delivery companies such as Zomato and Swiggy and quick commerce startups like Blinkit, Zepto, Instamart, BigBasket, Flipkart Minutes, Amazon Now and others have together paid over Rs 100 crore to gig workers on New Year’s Eve (NYE), as per several industry sources, as order volumes touched record highs.

The payout on NYE was an increase of about 30-40 percent when compared with a regular business day, when the total amount paid would add up to around Rs 60-70 crore, these sources said.

This is especially crucial as several industry stakeholders, including customers, were expecting widespread disruptions in deliveries as certain worker unions called for a nationwide strike against food delivery and quick commerce companies. However, platforms clocked yet another strong festive period.

Why is the payout significant? 

While the payouts reached a record high partly because Zomato and Swiggy rolled out higher incentives for delivery workers during peak hours and year-end days, the total earnings also climbed as more and more customers placed orders on these platforms.

Deepinder Goyal, group CEO Eternal, the parent company of Zomato and Blinkit said the firm delivered over “75 lakh orders on NYE, all-time high.”

He said the increase was organic and without any additional payouts.

“This happened without any additional incentives for delivery partners - NYE does see higher incentives than usual days and yesterday was no different than the past NYE days,” Goyal said in a social media post which said the call for strikes did not dampen demand.

Companies such as Zomato and Swiggy increase the amount delivery workers earn per order during rush hours and festive days to compensate them fairly. This has been the practice for several festive occasions and NYE was no different.

No impact from call for strikes:

Other top executives at different companies told Moneycontrol their business had “zero impact” from the call for strikes and that payments made to these delivery workers were at an all-time high.

“The strike had zero impact on order volumes. In fact, we delivered record volumes on NYE because of which total payouts, across food and quick commerce, crossed Rs 100 crore on a single day,” a top executive said.

While food delivery companies paid out Rs 60-70 crore to gig workers on NYE, quick commerce firms paid a total of Rs 50-60 crore to gig workers during the same period, a jump of at least 30 percent over a regular day, as per three top executives at different companies.

“All delivery workers were available to fulfill deliveries. In fact, if the strikes happened, it would result in a loss of over Rs 100 crore to all delivery workers – no one wanted to miss out on that,” one of the executives cited above said.