Foodtech and the delivery personnel dilemma

Indian foodtech companies are looking to corner the market. But to do so, they need to scale their fleets. There are tens of thousands of jobs on offer, but delivery personnel aren’t coming cheap

Food delivery startups such as Swiggy and Zomato are scaling their delivery fleets to meet growing demand

Currently there are more than 185,000 delivery personnel on the road, with vacancies for another 100,000

But attrition among delivery personnel is high. Can a delivery company achieve scalable growth with such high attrition?

For now, these companies are throwing money at delivery personnel to keep them loyal. But is it sustainable?

“Are they even making money?”

This was the question posed by 19-year-old Roshan*, a delivery personnel on the payrolls of UberEats, Uber’s food delivery arm. We’d been discussing his employment with UberEats, and the more I explained the company’s business model to him, the more worried he seemed.

Roshan is a college student, with little to no disposable income and no prior job experience.

AUTHOR

Salman SH

Salman has around four years of experience reporting primarily on consumer internet, startups, and the telecom sector. Previously, he worked with the financial newspaper Mint, reporting on startups and consumer internet trends. Prior to this, he worked with MediaNama and NextBigWhat. At The Ken, Salman will look at startups, technology trends, and the government policies shaping up around them. Loud metal, moshpits, and local gigs are he what he lives for.

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