Zomato's 10-min food delivery service draws flak

Hyderabad: Zomato has announced a 10-minute food delivery service. Deepinder Goyal, the founder of Zomato, took to Twitter on Monday to share the new feature that is called Zomato Instant.

"10-minute food delivery is coming soon on Zomato," he tweeted.

Criticising the move, Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union said companies like Swiggy, Zomato, Blinkit, and Instamart are assuring customers deliveries in 15 minutes and now Zomato Instant, to provide groceries and meals faster and acquire more customers, is competing with them and promising food delivery in 10 minutes while putting the lives of delivery partners at stake.

"Zomato has not been able to resolve issues like leaked meals due to faulty packaging and executing fast deliveries. As a result, delivery partners/workers have been penalised quite a few times. While planning to provide 10-minute deliveries to its customers, Zomato needs to resolve these issues and concerns of the workers," said Shaik Salauddin, president of Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union

Further, he said that Zomato should treat its delivery workers as human beings and not just as data points for its algorithm. It should understand the stress and pressure it creates with these new services it launches forgetting that the workers are not machines. Many of their delivery workers work for more than 10 hours and the platform actively engages such work practices by not setting any cap on maximum hours that a delivery worker can log in. Long working hours also increase the risk of accidents, he added.

"Even as Zomato assures its customers of lightning-fast food delivery, it needs to ensure that the issues and concerns of delivery workers/partners, who will be the ones to actually deliver this service, are taken care of. As Zomato commits to provide its customers a hyperlocal experience based on demand predictability and by starting four "finishing stations" in Gurugram, it needs to provide the delivery worker/partners access to washroom facilities, resting areas with parking for their vehicles, charging stations, and Wi-Fi access at the aforementioned locations," said Mr. Salauddin.

He added, "Ensuring the safety of its women delivery workers/partners operating in the areas catered by these "finishing stations" and keep its promise that delivery worker/partner is not to be penalised if the order is not delivered in 10 minutes. Zomato Instant should accommodate for the size/quantity of the order and should not offset the cost of the spilled/leaked food on the delivery worker/partner."