mathis varis @MathisVaris

Facts below (1/5): In 2025, average earnings per hour (EPH), excluding tips, for a delivery partner on Zomato were ₹102. In 2024, this number was ₹92. That’s a ~10.9% year-on-year increase. Over a longer horizon also, EPH has shown steady growth. Most delivery partners work for a few hours and only a few days in a month. But if someone were to work for 10 hours/day, 26 days/month, this translates to ~₹26,500/month in gross earnings. After accounting for fuel and maintenance (~20%), the net earnings for the partner are ~₹21,000/month. Note: Earnings per hour are calculated on total hours logged in, including the time when the partner might be waiting to receive an order. Earnings per “busy hour” will be higher but that’s not the right metric to look at. On top of this - delivery partners earn 100% of tips given by customers. The average tip per hour in 2025 on Zomato was INR 2.6 and in 2024 was INR 2.4 per hour. Tips are transferred instantly, with zero deductions. We absorb the payment gateway processing cost ourselves. About 5% of the orders get tipped on Zomato; 2.5% on Blinkit.

Last one on this topic, and I have been holding this in myself for a while. For centuries, class divides kept the labor of the poor invisible to the rich. Factory workers toiled behind walls, farmers in distant fields, domestic help in backrooms. The wealthy consumed the fruits of that labor without ever seeing the faces or the fatigue behind it. No direct encounter, no personal guilt. The gig economy shattered that invisibility, at unprecedented scale. Suddenly, the poor aren't hidden away. They're at your doorstep: the delivery partner handing over your ₹1000+ biryani, late-night groceries, or quick-commerce essentials. You see them in the rain, heat, traffic, often on borrowed bikes, working 8–10 hours for earnings that give them sustenance. You see their exhaustion, their polite smile masking frustration with life in general. This is the first time in history at this scale that the working class and consuming class interact face-to-face, transaction after transaction. And that discomfort with our own selves is why we are uncomfortable about the gig economy. We want these people to look our part, so that the guilt we feel while taking orders from them feels less. We aren't just debating economics. We are confronting guilt. That ₹800 order might equal their entire day's earnings after fuel, bike rent, and app cuts. We tip awkwardly, or avoid eye contact, because the inequality is no longer abstract. It's personal. Pre-gig era, the rich could enjoy luxury without moral discomfort. Labor was out of sight. Now, every doorbell ring is a reminder of systemic inequality. That's why debates explode. It's not just policy. It's emotional reckoning. Some defend the system (“they choose it”), others demand change (“this isn't progress, its exploitation”). And here’s the uncomfortable twist: the unsaid ask of clumsy ‘solutions’ isn’t dignity. It is about returning to invisibility. Ban gig work and you don’t solve inequality. You remove livelihoods. These jobs don’t magically reappear as formal, protected employment the next day. They disappear, or they get pushed back into the informal economy where there are even fewer protections and even less accountability. Over-regulate it until the model breaks, and you achieve the same outcome through paperwork instead of slogans: the work evaporates, prices rise, demand collapses, and the people we claim to protect are the first to lose income. And then what happens? The rich get their old comfort back. Convenience returns without faces. Guilt dissolves. We go back to clean abstractions and moral posturing from a distance. The poor don’t become safer, they become invisible again: back in cash economies, back in backrooms, back in shadows where regulation rarely reaches and dignity isn’t even debated. The gig economy just exposed the reality of inequality to the people who previously had the luxury of not seeing it. The doorbell is not the problem. The question is what we do after opening the door. Visibility is the price of progress. We can either use this discomfort to build something better (which we keep doing continuously as delivery partners are our backbone), or we can ban and over-regulate our way back into ignorance. One of those choices improves lives. The other simply helps the consuming class feel virtuous in the dark.

One more thing. Our 10 minute delivery promise is enabled by the density of stores around your homes. It’s not enabled by asking delivery partners to drive fast. Delivery partners don’t even have a timer on their app to indicate what was the original time promised to the customer. After you place your order on Blinkit, it is picked and packed within 2.5 minutes. And then the rider drives an average of under 2kms in about 8 minutes. That's an average of 15kmph. I understand why everybody thinks why 10 minutes must be risking lives, because it is indeed hard to imagine the sheer complexity of the system design which enables quick deliveries. Also, if you've ever wanted to know why millions of Indians voluntarily take up platform work and sometimes even prefer it to regular jobs, JUST ASK any rider partner when you get your next food or grocery order. You will be humbled by how rational and honest they will be with you. Having said that, no system is perfect, and we are all for making it better than today. However, it is far from what it is being portrayed on social media by people who don't understand how our system works and why. If I were outside the system, I would also believe that gig workers are being exploited, but that's not true.

Agree. And literally everyone who has a job wants to get paid more. Everyone thinks they deserve better. At the end of the day, market forces decide how much does someone get paid. Companies reliant on gig economy compete very brutally with each other. Demand is more than the supply, which results in gig incomes being more than what many formal entry level jobs in India pay.

Hardik Rajgor @Hardism

6 months ago

The real minimum wage is ₹0. It is called unemployment. Millions of people in India are unemployed. In many small towns and cities, guys in their early 20s leave their houses on a bike, loiter around all day, drink and smoke with their friends and gamble on cellphone games.

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Agree. I repeat – gig workers is one of the largest organised job creation engines in India. And we provide insurance, fair, timely and predictable wages. Gig doesn’t need more regulation, it needs less regulation. It will bring more people into the fold, who will be able to earn some money, upskill themselves and later join India’s organised workforce. Not to mention, consistently send their kids to school - which will fundamentally change the fabric of our nation one generation later.

Vinod Chendhil @vinodchendhil

6 months ago

Deepinder is right but very few people will agree to this. We have a Myntra warehouse right next door and it was buzzing today like every day, no one was on a strike or dharna. A lot of the kids who work there are in between jobs when they are unable to find anything else

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I am all for peaceful protests against anything and everything. But violent protests and stopping others who want to work from working is not okay (proof attached). Here’s what we know – a number of these protestors were not even our delivery partners. They were agents of political interests, piggybacking on the narrative to gain political mileage.

Shubhendu @BBTheorist

6 months ago

Mill workers in Kanpur tried to act in a similar fashion. Result: Mills closed down. The next 2 generations of these workers couldn’t not even have 2 square meals a day. The trade unionist who instigated them went on to become a parliamentarian & lived in a plush Lutyens house.

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@AadiAchint @deepigoyal @zomato For everyone’s reference, she doesn’t work at zomato anymore. ( Her Zomato slack handle is deactivated ) Zomato can’t be held responsible for her not updating her LinkedIn

My profile is being mass reported by Pakistanis. It looks like my reach has been affected. Like, retweet, comment or Follow me ,if you can see this tweet. Thanks 🇮🇳

@EndGameWW3 Sir/maam with all respect, the statement you have posted is correct but incomplete. He also talked dowing of PAK jets. I would request you to watch the entire briefing ( attaching the link below) to get a complete picture. youtube.com/live/ZMNaummDl…

Dear Indians This is how we attacked Pakistan. Show this to the entire world 🇮🇳 Please.

I’ve worked my entire life with people from India and it amazes me how confused people are regarding who and what India is about. Every word of this video should be heard. Plain and simple English. If you still don’t get it, you deserve to be Abdul’s 4th Wife.

Free Balochistan , RT for our Brothers

If this American can get it with such crystal clear clarity, why is it so difficult for some Indians? Are they dumb? #OperationSindoor via @wokeflix

Sky News has found social media accounts that posted videos at the site of an Indian strike expressing support for a terror group linked to al Qaeda. Sky's @Chesh reports. trib.al/LKjTSoT

This is massive. Spread this far and wide. Pakistan sympathizing accounts are being run by Al Qaeda.

Sky News @SkyNews

a year ago

Sky News has found social media accounts expressing support for a Pakistan-based terror group linked to al Qaeda, appear to have posted recent videos from a Pakistan mosque targeted by Indian airstrikes trib.al/qtdOLLv

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Every terrorist that’s been caught has admitted to being trained and funded by Pakistan. The truth is right in front of you, yet people still choose to turn a blind eye. Spread this video in other platforms too.

Sky News has found social media accounts expressing support for a Pakistan-based terror group linked to al Qaeda, appear to have posted recent videos from a Pakistan mosque targeted by Indian airstrikes trib.al/qtdOLLv

BIG: Sky News confirms Markaz Taiba mosque - which was hit by India during Operation Sindoor - was used by Pakistani terror groups