Food delivery firm Zomato has stated, that most of the stores of Blinkit – the quick commerce business that Zomato had acquired earlier – have resumed operations. The announcement sent company’s stock price up by as much as 5%, and they are currently trading at ₹54.35.
In a regulatory filing on Wednesday, the food delivery aggregator revealed that most of the stores which had been shut earlier have now reopened. In case you missed it, the stores had been shut following wage protests by delivery partners.
“We had to shut down some stores for a few days to ensure the safety of our employees at stores and the delivery partners. Most of these stores have now resumed operations,” Zomato said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday. The food delivery aggregator added that the disruptions did not have any material impact on the operations or financial performance of the company. “Hence we believe that this event does not warrant any disclosure under regulation 30 of the SEBI (LODR) Regulations, 2015,” it added.
Zomato remained mum on how much it reduced the payouts to the delivery partners have been reduced. However, reports suggest that the payouts may have recorded a drop of ₹10 – from ₹25 per order earlier to ₹15 per order currently. Still, it is a steep fall from the peak of ₹50 per order, which was back in 2022. These reductions in payouts, understandably, were not well-received by delivery partners and executives, who protested and went on strike in response. In fact, Blinkit had to shut down some stores in Gurugram, Haryana, after delivery workers went on strike, and the company notified its delivery partner app that the stores are being shut because partners had not worked for the past 3-4 days.
Overall, around 2,500 Blinkit delivery executives have been on strike in Gurugram since April 12, and around 50 of them had been shut down. Most of them were in and around the New Delhi-NCR region. “Hi there, please accept our sincere apologies. Your Blinkit store is undergoing necessary maintenance at the moment. Our teams are working on it, and we’ll be back very soon to serve you again,” Blinkit wrote on Twitter in response to to several complaints about the lack of deliveries in their areas.
Zomato justified these reductions in its payouts by saying that this would “address the needs of delivery partners, improve customer experience and reduce cancellation/order rejection, and frauds by few delivery partners in the system.” “Such changes are done from time to time, as needed,” the company added in its statement.
“We estimate Blinkit was operating ~370 dark stores pan India as of Q3FY23. This implies that about 25 per cent of the dark stores are currently not operational. Given that at least 3-4 days’ sales have been lost, this implies a one per cent loss in revenue from Blinkit and around 0.15 per cent of consolidated revenue for Q1FY24, already,” a ICICI Securities report on Monday read on Monday.
