Deepinder Goyal Reveals Gig Worker Math: Average Rider Earns…

Zomato Founder Deepinder Goyal on Friday shared the math to determine the wages of gig workers, claiming that the average earnings per hour rose by nearly 11%.

"In 2025, average earnings per hour (EPH), excluding tips, for a delivery partner on Zomato were Rs 102. In 2024, this number was Rs 92. That’s a 10.9% year-on-year increase. Over a longer horizon also, EPH has shown steady growth," Goyal posted on social media platform X.

Most delivery partners work for a few hours and only a few days in a month, he said. But if someone were to work for 10 hours a day and 26 days per month, then this translates to approximately Rs 26,500 a month in gross earnings, as per Goyal.

After accounting for fuel and maintenance, the net earnings for the delivery partners stands at about Rs 21,000 per month, he claimed.

Goyal explained that earnings per hour are calculated on total hours logged in, including the time when the partner might be waiting to receive an order.

Also, delivery partners "earn 100% of tips" given by customers, he said. The average tip per hour in 2025 on Zomato was Rs 2.6 and in 2024 was Rs 2.4 per hour. "Tips are transferred instantly, with zero deductions. We absorb the payment gateway processing cost ourselves," he added, while noting that about 5% of the orders get tipped on Zomato, and about 2.5% on Blinkit.

Goyal dismissed the charge of exploitation, sharing data to suggest that delivery partners are not overworked on Zomato and Blinkit platforms. In 2025, the average delivery partner on Zomato worked 38 days in the year and 7 hours per working day, reflecting "true gig style participation" rather than fixed schedules, he said, adding that only 2.3% of partners worked more than 250 days in the year.

"Demanding full-time employee benefits like PF, or guaranteed salaries for gig roles doesn’t align with what the model is built for. Delivery partners are not assigned shifts or geographies. They determine when to log in and log out, and their area of work in a specific city," he said.

Gig work, he said, is a reliable source of secondary income for delivery partners which is available to them throughout the year. It is used as a flexible, stop-gap earning option, not a long-term lock-in. "Flexibility isn't incidental to the gig model, it is the whole point."

Gig workers' union who launched protests last month raised apprehensions over the safety of riders due to the increasing mandates of 10 and 20-minute deliveries.

Addressing these concerns, the Eternal CEO said, "Firstly, delivery partners are not shown customer-facing time promises. There is no “10-minute timer” or countdown in the delivery app. 10 mins or faster deliveries are primarily due to our stores being closer to customers and not by higher speeds on the road."

In 2025, the average distance travelled per order on Blinkit was 2.03 km. Average driving time was about 8 minutes, which implies an average speed of around 16 km/h. On Zomato, where delivery times are longer, average driving speeds in 2025 were around 21 km/h.

"As you can see, average driving speeds are broadly similar across Zomato and Blinkit: 10 versus 30-minute delivery time is not affected by driving speed," he said.

According to Goyal, in 2025, Zomato and Blinkit spent over Rs 100 crore on insurance coverage for delivery partners.

This includes accident insurance with coverage of up to Rs 10 lakh; medical insurance with coverage of Rs 1 lakh plus OPD coverage of Rs 5,000; loss of pay insurance of up to Rs 50,000; and maternity insurance with coverage of up to Rs 40,000, he said.

Also, women delivery partners are provided with a "period rest days of 2 days per month". The company also provides access to a "gig-variant of National Pension Scheme", with 54,000 delivery partners enrolled under it, he added.

"Is this unfair? Especially for an unskilled job, which is largely part time, and has zero barriers to entry," Goyal said, in an apparent rebuttal to critics.