Swiggy, Zomato, UberEats have almost doubled salaries of delivery executives

Food delivery platforms Swiggy, Zomato and UberEats, in their competition to remain ahead of each other, have almost doubled the salaries of their delivery executives. In some cases the raise has been more than double. Delivery executives are also being given better incentives for deliveries during peak hours and rains. This move by online food delivery apps has an unlikely collateral - online e-commerce and retail sites, such as Flipkart, BigBasket.

While food delivery platforms are offering upto Rs 40,000/Rs 50,000 per month, a significant jump from their earlier Rs 18,000 to Rs 20,000, other e-commerce sites are only offering in the range of Rs 16,000 to Rs 18,000 per month, including incentives.

A senior executive at one of the affected platforms told The Economic Times that what the food delivery apps are offering these executives is impacting everybody and delivery partners are switching to Swiggy, Zomato and the ilk because of the lucrative pay.

Swiggy and Zomato, both newly armed with their latest rounds of funding, have been expanding their delivery network. Swiggy now boasts a 55,000-executives strong delivery fleet from 30,000 at the beginning of the year, while Zomato's fleet has about 50,000 executives, a jump from 1,800 in January. A Zomato spokesperson told the daily that they are aiming to increase by another 60% by the end of the year. Swiggy, on the other hand, is aiming to almost double their fleet in six to nine months. Joining the game is Foodpanda, backed by Ola, that is aiming to increase its fleet by more than double. Foodpanda pays its executives Rs 25,000 per month.

There is a significant rise on the amount delivery boys earn per order. From Rs 40-Rs 45, executives in cities with higher demand like Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru are getting paid Rs 80-Rs 120, including incentives. This increment is mostly restricted to big cities that have higher demands. However, with bigger fleets, number of orders per delivery executive has decreased from 18-20 per day to 12-15 a day.

Food delivery executives also get paid on hourly basis. The rates of that differ from platform to platform.

According to experts, e-commerce sites will have to beef up their game to retain delivery executives in order to balance back the scales that appear to be tipping in the favour of food delivery apps.

(Edited by: Anwesha Madhukalya)