Recently, the Indian government has interviewed a number of e-commerce platforms in the country and asked these companies to cancel the harsh "10-minute delivery" time limit for riders. Due to the many safety incidents caused by this service, public opinion in India even called this service "10 minutes of life and death".
"The Hindu" reported on the 14th that India's Minister of Labor and Employment Mandaviya summoned executives of several Indian e-commerce platforms such as Blinkit and Zepto last week to question the "10-minute delivery" service commitment. He said the safety of delivery workers must take precedence over such for-profit business commitments. Blinkit quickly changed its advertising slogan from "More than 10,000 products delivered to your door within 10 minutes" to "30,000 products delivered to your home." Since the company is the "industry leader" with over 50% market share in India, other platforms are expected to follow soon.
According to reports, the rapid development of e-commerce has indeed benefited many consumers in large and medium-sized cities in India. Blinkit’s early slogan was “last-minute delivery”, targeting housewives’ urgent orders after discovering missing ingredients or spices while cooking. As this simple and convenient service becomes popular, people begin to use it instead of going out to buy. E-commerce services have developed rapidly during the COVID-19 epidemic and have now become an important "reservoir" for employment. But as platform competition intensifies and consumer expectations for services continue to rise, riders are being squeezed by strict time constraints. E-commerce riders are called "gig workers". They get a delivery fee for each delivery. If they deliver 30 orders in a day, excluding labor costs (motorcycle gasoline or renting electric vehicles), they can get about 500 rupees (100 rupees is about 7.7 yuan). Alam, a 23-year-old practitioner, told the BBC that he works 12 hours a day, but his monthly income is only about 20,000 Indian rupees.
In their daily work, many riders often have no time to take care of safety protective gear, and are tired of dealing with India's disorderly road traffic, large areas of potholes and a serious lack of night lighting. India's "Print" stated that after a delivery platform was put into operation in Bangalore in 2024, there were more than 17,000 traffic violations by riders within a week. Some trade union organizations in India denounced "10-minute delivery" as a high degree of oppression of employees. They satirized that the verbal promises made by corporate executives in the conference room should not be "equal" with the reality faced by riders, and clearly stated that "workers are not algorithms."
In December last year, tens of thousands of delivery riders held large-scale strikes and protests in major cities such as Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore in India, calling for fairer pay and safer working conditions. Subsequently, the Indian government conducted "interviews" with major platforms. Afterwards, many trade union organizations in India affirmed the results of the meeting, calling the government's move an "important step forward to protect the lives and dignity of practitioners."
Some industry and Internet experts believe that government intervention has limited effect. After all, "speed is everything" in this industry, and practitioners still face dual pressures from platform algorithms and consumer ratings.