Zomato, Swiggy gig are best seen as private-sector-led urban MGNREGA

Earlier this month, an intense verbal pow-wow was sparked in social media, later followed by comments in print and TV, about the nature of gig work and the plight of workers doing this kind of job. The debate was prompted by the gig workers’ strike on 31 December 2025, when deliveries by the likes of Zomato, Blinkit, Swiggy, Zepto and Big Basket, among others, were to have been affected on a day when orders tend to peak. In reality, more deliveries were made that day than before, indicating that strikes in the gig economy are difficult to sustain, thanks to the large pool of unemployed youth in need of some form of income.

The arguments were polarised between those who were completely on the side of “exploited” gig workers, especially the pressure under which they work to make “10-minute” deliveries in crowded traffic conditions, and those who were more sympathetic to the company’s point of view. The latter asked, quite pertinently, whether these workers would have been better off if gig work did not exist at all. What would happen to urban wages if these companies became unviable and were to go belly-up? My answer is in the last para of this article.

Deepinder Goyal, promoter of Zomato, weighed in with data to claim that gig workers were not all that exploited, and called some of those who tried to disrupt the work of willing delivery agents on 31 December as “miscreants”. He could have avoided this term, even assuming it referred to those who used intimidation tactics to make the strike a success. But the information we got was quite useful. We learnt from Goyal that workers earned Rs102 an hour in 2025 (excluding tips), and this earning was 10.9 percent above the average levels in 2024, beating inflation. The average tip was around Rs 2.6 per hour, and delivery workers were not “overworked” on his platforms since they work around seven hours on average for 38 days a year. 

We can point out that averages conceal more than they reveal, but they are still useful to have since they establish that hourly wages are higher than what MGNREGA work (now renamed as G RAM G with many changes) would earn in rural areas. On the other hand, it is worth noting that they should be higher than MGNREGA averages since gig work of the kind done by Zomato is largely urban work, where the cost of living is higher than in rural areas. Additionally, there are costs to doing deliveries, since the vehicle and fuel costs are to be taken care off by the worker. Most importantly, driving a two-wheeler in crowded and polluted urban roads is hardly anybody’s dream job, and, if done over the long term, can impact the worker’s health adversely. 

The sharp division of opinion can be understood only if we also emphasise the dynamics of the capital-labour interplay. These jobs would not exist if adequate capital had not been deployed to develop the apps, build inventories, rent “dark” stores and invest in marketing and discounting strategies. On the other side of the equation, for several decades now, thanks largely to the abundant availability of risk capital (venture and private equity), labour has lost bargaining power everywhere. Automation and digitisation shift the balance of power in favour of companies and investors and against workers. 

This shift is the balance of power is not restricted to companies powering the gig economy. It permeates the entire agriculture and informal sectors. Even in the organised sector the share of contract workers has more than doubled over the last 25 years, from 20 percent in 1999-2000 to 42 percent in 2023-24, according to the Annual Survey of Industries. At this level, assuming skill levels between contract and regular staff are not that wide, unions cannot have strong bargaining power. They may have the capacity to disrupt, but they cannot ultimately decide the outcomes.

When the pool of labour is practically inexhaustible, labour cannot call the shots even if they unionise. To understand the power of capital when pitted against the enormous pool of labour available in India, the IT sector offers a great example. Starting salaries at software services companies like Infosys and TCS have remained largely stagnant for years around Rs 3-4 lakh per annum, and freshers sometimes earn less than top plumbers or beauticians in Urban Company (which provides carpentry, plumbing, electrical and beauty services at home at reasonable rates), an Economic Times news report said. At the top end of the scale, a Zomato delivery boy may be earning nearly as much per month if he works for long hours (10 hours daily, 26 days a  month, according to Goyal of Zomato).

Coming back to delivery agents and gig work, can this cycle of labour disempowerment be broken? How can their wages and working conditions be improved without damaging this new services industry?

Many people will say we need more regulation, but this may only prompt the companies to automate even more, and change the business model to use less labour. Also, one cannot get away from the reality that labour cannot seek an improvement in wages without a larger investment of capital, which currently can come only from profit-seeking investors whose time horizons may not be as long as one wants.  

One way out is to get the government into the game to provide low-cost platforms for gig work where worker earnings are much better, but anything that the government does comes at the price of efficiency and entrepreneurial ability. Or else why aren’t government platforms able to create an Uber or Ola that everyone can use at low cost? There is also the danger that politics will dictate policy, thus shifting the focus from customers to workers. It will be less able to understand market trends, since the pressure from workers will be to avoid change and disruption. 

Two possible models to follow, both to get workers a better deal and to avoid losing market focus, is to get philanthropists and social capital into the business. An alternate model would be to let the gig workers of Zomato and Swiggy gradually become profit partners in their companies once the venture capitalist and private equity players are given an exit, but that is some time away.

The basic contradiction between capital-led corporate power and worker-oriented powerlessness is not going to be sorted out anytime soon. There are no easy answers, but new models need trying. Killing a Zomato in the name of worker empowerment makes no sense, but pretending that what is going on is the best that can happen suggests that entrepreneurs and labour leaders have run out of ideas.

Putting the moralistic arguments aside, here is what gig work at a Zomato or Swiggy really implies: think of it as a private-sector-driven urban MGNREGA, which provides wage contestability and better bargaining power for urban workers seeking more stable jobs. That, in itself, is a public good, 

Given that they are still not making a solid profit from the quick delivery business, it does not matter if the likes of Zomato ultimately succeed or not. But their journey is part of our search for better job-creating options in a world where automation is a bigger threat to jobs than anything else.