When Platforms Launch ’10-Minute Delivery’, Indian Riders Choose to Strike on New Year’s Eve

On the strikers’ demands, he said: “Think about it — if a system were inherently unfair, how could it keep attracting people to join and stay in it as a career?”

The “partners” he refers to are the delivery riders themselves, revealing that in terms of employment relations, riders are not regarded as platform employees. This also means it is remarkably easy for the platforms to settle scores with riders who organise stoppages or strikes — India’s labour laws protect employees’ right to strike, so employers cannot dismiss or terminate them simply for striking. But riders, lacking employment contracts, do not enjoy these protections.

II. Workers’ “One Battle After Another” Against the Platform Economy

So, in a developing country of 1.4 billion people, what does India’s platform economy actually look like?

As in most countries worldwide, India has only seen a mushrooming of platforms in recent years, and these platforms have grown steadily only since the pandemic.

Take the industry giant Zomato as an example. Founded in 2008, it was originally called FoodieBay, a restaurant review website. In 2010 it rebranded to Zomato and continued rolling out review services around the world. By 2015, Zomato began testing food delivery, initially by partnering with other delivery platforms, until 2017 when it built its own fleet. During the pandemic in 2020, Zomato seized the moment when Indian states announced social distancing measures to expand rapidly — on one hand acquiring Uber Eats’ (Uber Eats) India operations, and on the other starting daily essentials delivery. By this year, Zomato has become India’s largest food delivery platform, holding a 58% market share in restaurant delivery.

Why did the pandemic propel Zomato’s expansion so dramatically? Partly, of course, it was the surge in delivery demand after lockdown. But equally, the pandemic battered India’s economy, throwing huge numbers of people out of work. Western media interviewed riders on the streets and lanes of Indian cities during the New Year’s Eve strike, and many said they had once been sole traders or small-business owners. Their cash flows collapsed during the pandemic, their little shops could no longer stay afloat, and the only option left was to become a delivery rider.

As the world’s most populous country, India is the battleground where delivery giants pursue a strategy of heavy investment, low unit prices and the race towards monopoly. India’s delivery order prices are remarkably low: data show that Zomato’s average delivery fee per order is roughly 12.5 Indian rupees — about one yuan. Subtract the rider’s share, and a single order cannot come close to sustaining a massive delivery platform. So how do these companies keep operating? On one hand, they rely on commissions from restaurants — every restaurant doing delivery business pays Zomato 15% to 30% per order. On the other, they rely on a steady stream of investment — investors anticipate that once a platform like Zomato achieves some form of monopoly over India’s enormous market, it can simply start raising prices and rake in the profits, so they are happy to buy into Zomato’s future.

For a platform with vast funding, this strategy of trading low prices for market share is little more than a “growing pain”. But for India’s SMEs and sole traders, life is far less comfortable. A hot topic on the Indian internet in 2024 was the rapid collapse of the traditional family-run general store. In 2023 alone, more than 200,000 such shops closed their doors, while delivery and online shopping platform orders were skyrocketing at over 200% a year. Indian media pointed out at the time that the selling points of the traditional Indian corner shop were fast delivery and low prices — traits that, in the era of big platforms, stood no chance against the predatory pricing deployed by platforms like Zomato in their all-out battle for market dominance.

And so, in India, online shopping and food delivery platforms are driving a vicious cycle that only accelerates: delivery and logistics platforms multiply, relentlessly slashing prices to chase monopoly in India’s vast market; the price cuts make it impossible for a host of small shops and their owners to compete, turning them into the unemployed; this group then finds it hard to secure or sustain manual-labour or desk jobs, and many are simply absorbed by the platforms — buying their own motorcycles and “partnering” with the apps as delivery riders.

In India, platformisation appears to be an unstoppable trend. By estimate, the country had more than 10 million platform workers in 2025. And according to NITI Aayog — India’s National Institution for Transforming India — the number of gig economy workers is projected to surge to around 24 million by 2030, the vast majority of whom will be platform workers.

Against this backdrop of an “ample supply” of labour, the remark by Zomato’s founder — “If a system were inherently unfair, how could it keep attracting people to work?” — is a textbook case of “why not just eat meat porridge?”, the ancient Chinese idiom for being utterly out of touch with others’ hardship. It is precisely this buyer’s market that has piled ever heavier delivery and income pressures on India’s food delivery riders.

IV. Excessive Working Hours Threaten Road Safety

Media interviews reveal that riders working roughly 15 hours a day in India’s major cities earn about 25,000 rupees a month (around 2,000 yuan), slightly above the national average wage. But when you factor in the fact that riders must cover their own motorcycle costs, fuel bills, insurance and accident medical expenses, that pay starts to look rather less appealing. The fact that so many are still willing to do this work says only that there simply are not many alternatives out there.

Safety and accidents are a pressing concern for many Indian riders, and this is closely tied to platforms compressing the delivery window for every order. Riders complain that the existing time targets already have them running red lights, breaking traffic rules, taking risks and rushing themselves to the point of exhaustion. “To finish on time, we have to keep pushing the speed, accelerate again and again. If you’re not fast enough, you simply cannot deliver on schedule. The moment I get an order, all I can think is ‘hurry, hurry’ — so that I can pick up more orders.”

The Indian riders striking now argue that the platform’s new “10-minute delivery” service is a race for market share that recklessly disregards rider safety. Once an accident or liability incident occurs, there is no employment contract in place; the platforms simply treat them as “franchised contractors”. During a meeting between Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha and the riders, they raised safety concerns — above all, the risk of injury or a crash under crushing time pressures, with no protections to fall back on afterwards.

Beyond safety and delivery-time pressures, the striking Indian delivery riders also called for higher pay per order — because the fuel prices they pay out of pocket keep climbing with fluctuations in global oil markets. They also demanded greater transparency in platforms’ complaint and account-suspension mechanisms — fraudulent complaints can lead to riders being locked out, and appeals are notoriously difficult. The two unions that organised the strike — the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT) and the Telangana Gig and Platform Workers’ Union (TGPWU) — have described these mechanisms as “algorithmic exploitation“.

V. Contract Workers or Sole Traders?

The gig economy is not, in fact, a new phenomenon in India. Ever since independence, formal employment has always fallen far short of demand, and vast numbers of people have had to scrape together a living through all kinds of informal work. But the new platform-based gig economy differs from what came before: it operates under the guise of large, formal companies while evading the regulations and constraints that apply to such companies. Workers within it are unlikely to enjoy the flexibility once available to casual workers in family-run or community businesses, nor the support of informal networks that used to cushion them.

In recent years, several trade unions have emerged in India’s gig sector. The Telangana Gig and Platform Workers’ Union (TGPWU), which helped launch this action, along with several other unions, had previously staged protests by app-based domestic workers and ride-hail drivers over excessively low platform pay, as well as caste-based and identity-based discrimination.

In India, food delivery platforms have even tried to cater to upper-caste sensibilities. In 2024, Zomato briefly launched a “Vegetarian-only delivery” service. Riders believed this would usher in caste and religious discrimination — those considered “unclean” would be excluded from the dedicated delivery fleet. Under pressure from unions and public backlash, Zomato ultimately withdrew the service.

The very nature of platform work makes it widely assumed that the gig economy is resistant to workers’ associations or trade union organisation. India’s unions have responded to this reality by leveraging social media to mobilise and connect workers — using short videos to raise awareness online about workplace safety, income-tax filing, social-security registration and more. At the same time, they campaign for physical “rest points” for riders and treat in-person outreach, problem-collection and feedback as follow-up to their online advocacy.

A 2025 report by the TGPWU found that 62% of surveyed gig workers said the union’s work had delivered some benefit, including providing a platform to voice grievances and breaking the isolation that had left individual workers unable to engage with the platforms.

Many have pointed out that, based on Indian legal precedents dating back more than half a century, platform gig workers could in fact be classified as full-fledged employees. A 1947 ruling by the Supreme Court of India stated that the key difference between an “independent contractor” and an employee is that the latter cannot determine the content or form of their own work — what specific tasks to perform or how to perform them is not left to their discretion. By that definition, the algorithms and platform apps fit the bill perfectly. Yet when it comes to the platform economy, both the Indian government and the judiciary have turned a blind eye to such precedents.

VI. Platforms Summoned

The riders’ action cannot be dismissed as a complete “failure” either. On their demand to scrap the “10-minute delivery” service, they secured a partial victory: on 13 January, Indian media reported that the central government had summoned several delivery platforms and instructed them to stop promoting claims like “delivered in 10 minutes”. However, the government appears to have asked only that platforms drop the delivery-time advertising, not that they cease the service altogether. The riders’ win remains limited.

Moreover, as similar stoppages have multiplied in recent years and riders’ and platform workers’ associations continue to build momentum, India’s central government, while stopping short of recognising riders as platform “employees”, is now considering plans to extend social security and regulatory oversight to gig workers. At the state level, several governments have already enacted or are preparing legislation to bring platform workers under legal protection.

Among them, Rajasthan has already legislated; Karnataka and a handful of other states have entered the legislative process. A common thread in these laws is a requirement for platforms to set aside roughly 1% to 5% of each order’s revenue to fund a protection scheme for riders. Most also require companies to issue full contracts to riders and register with the government. Although these are not employment contracts and the benefits remain modest — not to mention the practical challenges of enforcement — the underlying logic mirrors recent legislative efforts in places like Singapore to regulate platform labour: treating platform work as a quasi-employment relationship and mandating that platform companies bear a portion of compulsory social insurance contributions.

Foodthink Contributor

Aqi

International news correspondent, freelance writer

 

 

 

 

Editor: Tianle