In another blow for the food delivery giant Zomato, several hundreds of its delivery executives hit the streets of Mumbai and Bengaluru on Monday to protest against the company's revised pay and incentive structure, which they said would hurt their monthly earnings. This has come right after the conflict with restaurant owners with '#logout campaign', pausing the 'Infinity dining programme', layoffs and much more. As per The Economic Times, delivery executives said that Zomato circulated a message regarding the revised incentive structure on Friday, to be implemented from Monday that sparked off the protests.
Earlier the company would pay rupees 300, rupees 600 and rupees 800 for completing 11, 16 and 20 orders, respectively, in a day, the revised structure is nowhere close to that. Another bone of contention here is the way food giant revises its payment for deliveries based on distance. Where a distance of 5.5 kms would earn the executive flat rupees 30 and an additional rupee 10 for each km, it will now fetch them one rupee per additional 100 metres over the 5.5 km limit, as told to ET by a delivery executive.
(Also Read: Zomato Suspends 'Infinity Dining' Programme Amid #LogOut Protest)
Zomato did not confirm whether it had changed its incentive structure as claimed by its delivery agents. A spokesperson from the company said, "It calculates the delivery agent's incentive over different metrics such as base pay, user satisfaction, delivery touchpoints, minimum guarantee etc. Reduced delivery time (less than 30 minutes) and increased system efficiency have enabled our delivery partners to perform more deliveries in the same amount of time." It said that they are working towards resuming the services in the affected areas. It had asked restaurants in Mumbai to be prepared to manage delivery volumes this week while the company tries to rationalise cost.
Incidentally, this comes right after Zomato's co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal tweeted on September 5 saying it's delivery partners' monthly income has crossed Rs 200 crore for the first time and that it has 2,30,000 delivery partners in India. He also said the company will add 10,000 new jobs as a result of direct employment/contract with the company.
Zomato has been in the news for the past few months with multiple dissensions with its partners. In pursuit to compete with rivals like Swiggy and UberEats, both of whom are growing at an aggressive pace, it is yet to be seen what the future holds for the food giant.