Zomato has stated that the ongoing strike of Blinkit’s delivery executives and the temporary closure of hundreds of dark stores since last week will have no material impact on the operations or financial performance of the foodtech company. The disruption will have less than a 1% impact on Zomato’s revenue, according to the company. Zomato has made changes to the delivery partner payout structure with respect to the Blinkit business to address the needs of delivery partners, improve customer experience, and reduce cancellation/order rejection fraud. Most of the stores have resumed operations, and Zomato’s shares jumped as much as 4.8% to INR 55.9 on the BSE during the early trading hours following the clarification.
Blinkit’s delivery partners have been on strike since April 12 due to a reduction in delivery fees by Zomato’s quick-commerce platform. The delivery fees were slashed to INR 14 per order from INR 50 earlier, which led to a temporary shutdown of over 50% of Blinkit’s dark stores in the Delhi-NCR region. The quick-commerce app displayed a message saying that the service was ‘temporarily unavailable.’ On Monday, Blinkit delivery executives met Gurugram Deputy Labour Commissioner Dinesh Kumar, demanding a minimum pay of INR 25 per delivered order.