NEW DELHI: Consumers in many parts of Delhi-NCR continue to face difficulty in placing their orders on the food delivery app Blinkit as more than half of its 200 dark stores in the region are facing a shutdown.
The shutdown, which started a few days back after the Zomato-owned company came out with a revised payment structure for its delivery agents, is expected to intensify and more stores are expected to go offline as agents feel the decision to cut down their earnings is arbitrary.
According to Blinkit’s revised payment structure, delivery partners will now receive a minimum fee of R15 per delivery (with a distance-based fee component being introduced), instead of R25 per delivery. Delivery executives are on strike against this new pay structure. “A year back we signed up with Blinkit as they were giving R50 per order. It was soon changed to R25 per order. It is now reduced further to R15. The new payment structure will cut our daily earnings by 40-50%,” said a delivery partner at Blinkit. He added that the company has started suspending delivery agents who are participating in the strike.
“We are not treated like employees or workers of the company,” said another delivery agent at Blinkit.
Meanwhile, a browse on the app shows that services are ‘temporarily unavailable’ in the Delhi-NCR region. While replying to a user on Twitter, Blinkit, said that they are undergoing maintenance.
“We understand the hassle this must be causing you. Our teams are working on fixing this at the earliest, and we’ll be back very soon to serve you again,” said the Blinkit Twitter handle.
Blinkit operates approximately 400 dark stores in 20 cities throughout the country. Around 200 of these dark stores are present in the Delhi-NCR region. Food delivery platform Zomato had last year acquired Blink (formerly known as Grofers) in a share swap deal.