Zomato Increases Delivery Executives' Pay To Make Up For Sky-Rocketing Fuel Prices

With fuel prices touching ₹100 per litre, restaurant aggregator and food delivery, Zomato, on Thursday said that it has increased its delivery executives' pay by 7-8% to make up for the skyrocketing fuel prices.

The company said that the fuel price hike has directly impacted the earnings of their delivery partners who at times have to get back to the base working areas to get another order in case of a long-distance order.

Zomato founder and Chief Executive Officer Deepinder Goyal said that the company will bear the cost of the increased remuneration and will "not pass it on to its customers or restaurants partners".

According to The Telegraph, Zomato has taken multiple steps in the previous month to make sure that this increase in the running costs for delivery partners does not impact their take-home earnings. The company said that its delivery partner travels 100-120 km in a day and consume 60-80 litres of fuel in a month. The recent rise in the price of fuel leads to an additional monthly expenditure of ₹600-800 (about 3 per cent of monthly income) from their take-home income.

Moreover, Zomato has also introduced a long-distance return pay under which, for every long-distance order, its delivery partner would either receive another order within the next 15 minutes that would bring them back close to their base areas of working or they will receive an additional payout for travelling the extra distance.

"We are committed to making Zomato the best place to work for our delivery executives. We understand how fuel price hikes can impact their earnings and have decided to factor in such developments in their pay structure. Both of these inclusions combined will increase their earnings by 7-8%," said Mohit Sardana, COO, food delivery, Zomato.

"We have already implemented the new structure in about 40 cities and will be rolling it out in other cities in the coming week," Sardana added.

The announcement comes amid Zomato receiving a $250 million (over ₹1,800 crore) funding from existing investors Tiger Global, Kora and others. The company currently has 1.5 lakh delivery executives and also has plans to increase its strength further.

Last December, the company introduced a fixed salary structure for its delivery partners. It is a growing online segment for the past few years.

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