Earlier this month, Zomato owned Blinkit announced a revised pay structure for it’s delivery executives.
- Previously, they were being paid a fixed Rs 25 per delivery and peak-hour incentive of Rs 7 per trip
- It has now been revised to a minimum of Rs 15 per trip with a distance-based component
This led to the protests, as delivery workers claim the revision has reduced their earnings. (The claim must be true as the purpose of revision must be to work on the unit economics/ profitability)
The protests were resulting in disruptions in the regular operations of some stores which also meant that the protesting workers were not earning enough.
As the protests didn’t lead to any revisions by Blinkit, now about 1,000 workers out of 3,000 in National Capital Region have joined the competition.
The Company doesn’t seem to be concerned. Though the operations have suffered since protests, it claims to have been regularly hiring new executives and is confident of recovering the lost ground quickly.
It’s a widely known fact that businesses like Blinkit have been over paying the delivery executives since beginning. The hope was that this will eventually be passed on to the customers. That scenario seems unlikely anytime soon.
In the interim, a listed franchise like Blinkit (Zomato) has no choice but to reduce the delivery executives fee to improve the unit economics.
From workers’ perspective it would not be easy to accept (got used to higher pay); especially if they have options available with the private money funded unlisted competition.