Is the 10-minute delivery model necessary?

What are the major concerns over 10 to 20 minutes delivery?

Prashant Kamal: The debate around the gig workers’ plight is not just about 10-minute delivery. There is so much beyond that. A few powerful people are deliberately trying to make it a binary between consumers’ comfort and gig workers’ misery. 10-minute delivery is not a need of consumer, it’s a competition. Zepto started it, Blinkit, Amazon, Swiggy, Instamart and others followed it. There is no real difference between the delivery of groceries in 10 minutes or say 20-30 minutes. But there is a huge difference for the person delivering it. I have three points to make here. First, this is not just software that runs the system. It only works because a massive human workforce which is kept under unstable pay, changing rules, and the constant threat of getting their IDs blocked by an app. Second, do we allow these logic in other industries? Customers would always want cheaper goods. So do we employ children to reduce costs or remove factory safety to make things cheaper? So, here the opposite is happening. Speed is not created by technology. It is extracted from a real human, real people. Third, let’s look at the economics. Tech costs are considered a given and they are protected. Marketing budgets are treated as a given and are protected. So, why only labour is treated as adjustable? Who is really paying here for the 10-minute delivery? Fast delivery is a choice, not a necessity, a choice to offer small convenience to customers by building a system that keeps workers insecure and disposable.

Kamal Karanth: By going by the volumes and dependency it has created in some of the categories, it seems that it’s a model that is becoming a part of our lives. Some of us can argue that life can happen without 10 minutes delivery, but then there are many such things, including online shopping and other things that we have got used to, which can be deemed unnecessary. But given the demand generated by a few of these companies, I would like to believe that it has created itself as a necessity. From 2024 to 2027, quick commerce has grown threefold — from ₹50,000 crore in 2025, it’s closing in to ₹1 lakh crore to ₹1.5 lakh crore in the next two years. Industry is growing at 28%. Online grocery market is expected to grow at almost 40% to 50%. So if you look at the commerce of it and how the consumers are lapping it up, it clearly looks like it has become necessary for people. We can sit on the balcony and say that it is not necessary, but we have to look at what the consumers are having up.

The enterprises are there to generate commerce, generate possibly profits eventually. Let’s face it, none of these companies have made huge profits yet. They’ve gone public, either the venture capital companies have funded them thanks to the IPO market or the public money is funding them now to become truly profitable. So, from a delivery platform’s point of view, creating a crore of a jobs requires at least five years. In India, 20 million people are passing out to make way for the workforce coming in, and we are hardly able to create two million jobs for them every year. So, in the context of people who do not have high skills but need a job, I think it’s a huge gap that these platforms have fulfilled. So we should ask the primary question, is some job better than no job?

What ideally should be the regulatory framework for platforms and gig economy?

KK: As far as the labour laws are concerned, globally, it’s considered that India’s labour laws are one of the most protected, means that full-time employees have greater amount of protection when it comes to the earlier regulation that we had. But when it comes to gig, because it was a new concept, it was not covered [in regulations] to a great extent. So, there is a lot of grey involved in that as to what all should be covered. Nobody expected when the gig work came into play that it will become so huge. So, not much of regulation came into play. But now I think the regulators are getting into the act of saying worker protection is important. But if you make it like a full-time employment, then I guess the gig will lose the shine of it. Considering whatever jobs have got created, and we know that many of them work full-time in this, there should be possibly more flexibility provided in the form of any protection, because they are in the field all the time. But making it completely a full-time employment may actually kill the model; and we’ve just begun in this space, the growth seems to be very promising. We shouldn’t do something which possibly will kill the employment generation in the country, where possibly our biggest struggle is to generate employment for the youth.

PK: Studies have shown that 80% of workers engaged with gigs and platforms are working full time. A few of these platforms are generating a few jobs in this country where job situation is really a huge crisis. For millions, this is their primary livelihood. So, we cannot completely ignore their plight and their working conditions. They are asking for predictable minimum income, fair pay, protection from sudden ID blocks and for clear rules for pay and penalties. They’re asking for basic safety cover. They’re asking for data transparency. India is treating the platforms as neutral tech companies and workers as independent. That’s not really true. Platforms set prices, they decide who gets work, they control ratings, they can switch people off overnight. So, that’s not a free market. One side is writing all the rules. So, the principle should be simple. If you control the work, you must carry obligations. That means a minimum earning for accident insurance, pensions; or at least there should be a process before blocking or punishing workers. So this is not a radical demand. This is where the world is going. India cannot keep pretending that platforms are just like software, and if you can switch someone’s income off with an algorithm, you must carry legal responsibility as well.

Are Labour Codes sufficient to create a social security system for gig workers?

PK: No. They came very late and highly insufficient. The Code is vague and non-mandatory in nature. The Code authorises few welfare programmes like accident insurance, maternity benefits and all, but it doesn’t make them mandatory or enforceable right away. Everything depends on separate government notifications and funding setups. Gig workers have to register themselves on e-SHRAM portal, get an ID card, but they get no tangible benefits like covered hospital bills or pensions. They offer a social security scheme but no broader labour rights, and explicitly exclude gig workers from being classified as employees. This means no access to minimum wages, regulated working hours, paid leaves or overtime pay or collective bargaining under other Labour Codes. Gig work isn’t seen as an employment relationship for wage purposes. So, issues like income volatility or algorithmic rate cuts or long working hours are not addressed properly.

Thirdly, the funding provisions for social security are inadequate. There is a vagueness on exact rates, enforcements and how funds shall be allocated. The most important thing is [there is] no regulation of algorithmic practices. The actual problem that the workers face here is the blind spots where they face lack of transparency. Algorithm controls task assignment, who gets the work, and incentives, ratings, and even de-activations. These black boxes cause stress, unfair penalties, and income instabilities. But the Code nowhere mandates transparency, accountability, or appeals against algorithmic decisions. So workers are at the mercy of technology that prioritises profit over fairness, and there is no mechanism for grievance redressal and dispute resolution.

KK: If you look at a full-time employment, where is the transparency? Do the enterprises who allocate work tell you why they are giving so much of work? And if they terminate you, do you really have a kind of a guarantee that you will have that job forever? I think even in a full-time employment in the private world today, there is no such guarantee. There is no such transparency. Let us see how many of the workers will remain if gig works are made permanent. There is an attrition of 1 lakh to 1.5 lakh workers who are leaving and joining somewhere else every month. That means it’s a question of demand-supply ratio. Instead of killing the golden goose, which is growing, I think what India should focus on is creating more employment opportunities. Then the friction of jobs will take over. Then those who are today forced to work with gig platforms will go and work elsewhere. If we try to scuttle this work which is already there, which as a sector is growing, I’m afraid the money that is going into the sector by the public markets may vanish. The Labour Codes are still evolving as of now. I think when they come up with something stronger, we possibly can qualify it further.

A NITI Aayog report envisages that about 2.35 crores will join the gig economy by 2029-2030. So, what are the future of these platforms and gig workers in the background of everyday changes that AI and the technological innovations bring?

KK: The model is here to stay, because the market is growing. I think we have to make peace with that, with no alternative of employment growth that we can see coming as fast as this sector. I think we should protect what are the good things of it, possibly engage with platforms more than disrupting their business models and saying, how can we bring social security and allow the otherwise unskilled people to get a job? I think we have no recourse.

AI will come in, AI will work for, I think, more entry-level repeat tasks which can get automated. So, I don’t think the current model of this gig platforms that are employing gig workers will get disrupted in the short term. Having said that, clearly, you see the investments the government is making through production-linked incentives, manufacturing is a sector that we are focusing on very strongly as a country. And manufacturing does not create overnight jobs like a tech sector did in the past. So, it will take its time. But I think in a three to five year time, our manufacturing employment quotient and ratio will increase. But that is a slow movement that we can see; the faster movement is in the quick commerce sector, and we should do everything to protect it.

PK: The huge crisis of unemployment cannot be addressed without improving our manufacturing sectors, particularly those sectors which are labour-intensive like construction works, textiles and all. So, government should make policies to improve these sectors.

I think if you don’t change the rules and the way we think, the future of gig workers is very simple and very brutal. AI will bring more control, less voice, and more people living one algorithm update away from losing their income. Today, a delivery worker can be switched off by an app, or tomorrow AI will be deciding that faster, cheaper, and at a larger scale. So, no conversation, no explanation, no appeal, just a silent drop in orders, then nothing. So, AI will make platforms incredibly efficient at replacing people, rotating people, and squeezing more work out of whoever is still logged in. That means workers become more disposable, like not more secure.