Fresh trouble for Blinkit as over 1,000 riders join rivals

Earlier this month, Zomato-owned Blinkit had announced that it would pay delivery executives a minimum of Rs 15 per trip with a distance-based component, moving away from a fixed Rs 25 per delivery and peak-hour incentive of Rs 7 per trip. Blinkit’s delivery workers have been protesting against this change, saying it reduces their earnings.

The protest had led to several dark stores, or micro warehouses, of Blinkit across Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Faridabad and Ghaziabad being shut down for a few days. Now, despite the company’s efforts to resume operations, multiple dark stores in Delhi and Gurgaon remained unavailable to customers because of lack of sufficient delivery executives. Blinkit has around 200 of these warehouses in Delhi-NCR, from where it delivers goods to customers within a 2-3 km radius of each store.

“Blinkit had close to 3,000 delivery executives in Delhi-NCR on its platform prior to the strike. Around one-third of them have joined other platforms after a week of protesting,” a person aware of the development said. “It is difficult to pinpoint how many would be there with Blinkit now because the company has been signing on new delivery workers as well in the last week.”

Mohammed Zakir, an East Delhi-based delivery executive who was protesting against Blinkit’s change of payout structure, said he has started working with Zepto. “Some of our fellow workers who were protesting started delivering orders, and we could only be out of work for so many days. I have parents and siblings to take care of at home, who depend on my daily wage. We really hoped the company would go back on the old rate card,” he said.

ET’s email query to Zomato remained unanswered as of press time.

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Last week, the company also circulated a special incentive-based rate card valid for 10 days for some stores in Delhi and Noida, which said delivery executives could earn between Rs 700 and Rs 1,200 on fulfilment of certain order milestones.The same week, several Blinkit riders were also de-registered by the company. Delivery executives in Gurgaon and Delhi said they received a message on the Blinkit delivery partner app informing them that some stores were being shut because there had been no work in the last three-four days.

According to the message, the registration of the delivery executive with the platform was terminated.

The protest at Blinkit has also pushed up the delivery orders for its rivals. ET had reported on April 18 that Tata-owned BigBasket, Nexus Venture Partners-backed Zepto and Swiggy’s Instamart saw a 25-50% surge in daily orders in the days following the protest.

The protest had forced almost 100 Blinkit stores to down shutters temporarily. They, however, reopened last week.

“The protests by delivery workers were on expected lines, and the store managers were asked to shut down to maintain safety and security at the dark stores,” a Blinkit executive told ET on condition of anonymity.

On April 20, Zomato told the stock exchanges that the recent disruption at Blinkit had a revenue impact of less than 1% on the quick-commerce unit during the ongoing quarter. “We had to shut down some stores for a few days to ensure safety of our employees at stores and the delivery partners. Most of these stores have now resumed operations,” it had said.