Zomato CEO takes responsibility as company scores 1/10 on working conditions for delivery partners

"We were wrong," isn't something you hear very often, particularly, not from people in power. When it's a CEO of a startup gearing for an IPO, the likelihood decreases exponentially.

So when Fairwork India Ratings 2020 gave Zomato a 1/10 ranking for its working conditions for employees, its CEO Deepinder Goyal took full responsibility for the abysmal score and said: "We knew we had things to work on, but we didn’t know that there is so much room for improvement."

The restaurant-aggregator and food delivery startup scored the lowest in Fairwork India's Ratings of labour standards along with Swiggy. The report evaluated the working conditions of delivery partners hired by startups.

Considering the reports of Zomato's delivery partners going on strikes, the ranking did not come off as a surprise. However, CEO and co-founder Goyal took to Twitter to take responsibility of the scores and said that he would leave no stone unturned to perform better in the rankings next year

Zomato's delivery executives went on multiple strikes last year, citing issues like overworking, underpayment and selective delivery (executives refused to deliver beef and pork).

Worker dissatisfaction also rose from unresponsive communication channels or premeditated responses, frequent unwarned ID blocks and not receiving orders in their chosen pick-up zone.

Unreliable insurance was another factor the Fairwork report considered.

The Fairwork 2020 rating was helmed by the Centre for IT and Public Policy (CITAPP) at the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIITB), the University of Oxford and the University of Manchester.

Home-services marketplace, Urban Company ranked first on the list with a score of 8 of 10. Flipkart's Ekart scored 7, securing the second rank.

Dunzo and Grofers scored 4, while Amazon ATS, Bigbasket, Housejoy and Ola scored 2 out of 10.