Zomato’s gig economy lives in the grey

Why the debate over the delivery workers' strike misses the limits of absolutes on labour and capital

- RISHI RAJ

THE STRIKE BY delivery workers on December 31, and the forceful defence mounted soon after by Eternal CEO Deepinder Goyal, have turned the gig economy into a proxy battlefield for a larger ideological debate.

Numbers have been marshalled, hourly earnings calculated, and the language of capitalism versus socialism dusted off with unusual confidence. What has been lost in the heat is a simple fact that modern economies do not work in absolutes, and neither do modern democracies.

Goyal's public thread, framed as a data-driven rebuttal, laid out what delivery partners on Zomato and Blinkit earned in 2025. Average earnings per hour, he said, stood at ₹102, up from ₹92 the year before. On an illustrative basis, a partner working 10 hours a day for 26 days could gross around ₹26,500 a month, or about ₹21,000 after fuel and maintenance. He emphasised that this metric was calculated on logged-in time, not just active deliveries, and argued that the data showed a steady upward trend. He also underlined that most partners worked intermittently, treating delivery as supplementary income rather than full-time employment.

Critics responded by questioning the assumptions embedded in those averages, pointing to long hours, income volatility, and the absence of social security.Supporters countered that the system was voluntary, legal, and offered flexibility unmatched by traditional employment. The debate quickly hardened into familiar camps: Exploitation versus opportunity, labour rights versus entrepreneurial freedom.