Have you been noticing the frequent “all delivery partners are busy” message on your food delivering apps like Zomato and Swiggy in the past few weeks?
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Your food delivery is taking longer than usual because there is an acute shortage of delivery executives across major metros, causing service delays and hurting the number of orders these platforms are able to take from customers.
In an indication that platforms are indeed facing a delay, Swiggy on Tuesday said it is temporarily suspending its hyperlocal delivery offering ‘Swiggy Genie’ in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.
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“Swiggy Genie is temporarily unavailable in 3 out of the 68 cities. The cricketing and festive season has resulted in a surge in demand for servicing the requirements for both the food marketplace and Instamart, requiring us to prioritise these deliveries accordingly. We hope to resume Swiggy Genie in the impacted cities soon,” a company spokesperson said.
There are several factors why this is happening. According to Rituparna Chakraborty, executive vice president, TeamLease Services this is a combination of the economy opening up, new business model experiments floating and a spike in domestic consumption, increasing the demand for delivery services.
According to a source from the industry, there is currently a 20-25 percent churn happening in the gig workforce.
Prashant Janadri, CEO and Founder of Taskmo, a Quess Investee company, too has said that they have seen around 20 percent of delivery executives shift to other hyperlocal tasks like riders, field sales, stock audit, marketing and other semi-skilled tasks in the last month.
With the economy opening up and jobs coming back into the picture, many who entered the gig workforce because there were no other jobs, are now moving away as jobs become available.
And those who are still part of the gig workforce are being lured by several new apps in the quick commerce or mobility space flush with funds offering higher incentives.
Bhaskar* who was a delivery partner with Zomato for about four years has now left the platform. He now rides for hyperlocal delivery platform Borzo, which he says is giving him better commissions, as against roughly Rs 20 he was making per order with Zomato.
Shaik Salauddin, national general secretary of the Indian Federation of APP- Based Transport Workers (IFAT), said that out of the roughly 15,000-30,000 delivery executives that larger cities have, around 2000-3000 per state have left these platforms.
"These workers are showing interest in signing up with apps such as Rapido, Uber Moto, and other such mobility platforms," said Salauddin.
Zomato, on the other hand, is in the process of transitioning into a slot-based delivery model where delivery executives will be allowed to log in for 4-hour slots, and if they’re to pick a second such slot, preference is first given to those who are logging in for the first time.
While Zomato’s new model is aimed at addressing the problem of long working hours of delivery executives, some delivery workers are unhappy with this model. According to them, this limits the number of deliveries their able to make, thus limiting their earnings.
Industry experts, delivery executives and associations say that in addition to the reasons above, the hot weather and rising fuel costs are also pushing delivery executives away from these apps.
“It is so hot that working in the afternoon is painful, especially because we have to wait outdoors on the road waiting for orders to come in and then ride or cycle in this heat to delivery that order. And on top of that, I have to pay almost 120 per litre for petrol, which leaves me with nothing in hand by the end of the day,” a food delivery executive in Mumbai said.
The only way to address this problem, experts say, is better pay incentives that make gig work a sustainable work option for these workers.
“With these companies, especially the listed ones like Zomato now having to focus on turning profitable, they’re unable to lure workers with very high commissions or benefits anymore, unlike the new startups that are raising funds and luring gig workers. If the churn is to reduce, the only way to do that is for platforms to sell long-term association value to these gig workers to remain with them,” TeamLease's Chakraborty adds.
