Blinkit says 70% of its delivery partners have opted for new payout structure

Zomato-owned quick-commerce platform Blinkit on Wednesday cleared the air over its 50 dark stores being shut in Delhi-NCR owing to protests by its delivery partners over wages. On Wednesday, Blinkit said 70% of its delivery partners have opted for the new payout structure. 

"All of our stores are back in operations now. Over 70% of our delivery partners have also opted-in to the new payout structure, without any loss in earnings and continue to deliver on the platform. We are experiencing higher demand than supply at the current moment and some customers will see higher than expected times for the next few days," said Blinkit spokesperson.

Zomato Ltd also said on Wednesday that most stores of Blinkit had resumed operations after being shut due to wage protests, sending its shares up as much as 5%.

The disruptions had less than 1% impact on Zomato's revenue, the Gurgaon-based company said in a regulatory filing. Blinkit, which Zomato bought last year for $550 million, accounted for 12.7% of Zomato's total revenue in the third quarter.

Zomato had shut down some stores for a few days to ensure the safety of its employees at stores and the delivery partners after it made changes to the payout structure of Blinkit delivery partners, it said.

Blinkit has around 400 stores in India, of which 50 were shut, mostly in and around New Delhi, on Friday, as employees pushed demands for better wages.

The changes to pay were made to "address the needs of delivery partners, improve customer experience and reduce cancellation/order rejection frauds by few delivery partners in the system", Zomato said on Wednesday.

Blinkit competes with other big delivery firms, including top retailer Reliance-backed Dunzo, Tata's BigBasket and SoftBank-backed Swiggy in India's fast-growing grocery market.

With inputs from Reuters