Jobaaj Stories
In what appears to be another setback for the q-commerce company, Blinkit has announced the permanent closure of a few dark stores in Gurugram.
The company has been in a lot of trouble as it recently slashed the delivery payout of delivery workers from Rs 25 to Rs 15 within a delivery radius of 1 km. The delivery partners have been protesting against the same as over 2,500 delivery workers have been on strike since the past week.
The strikes, which are focused around the Gurugram and Noida areas, have caused all customers a lot of trouble. They are unable to place orders as an estimate by ICICI Securities says that Blinkit would lose 1% of it's revenues due to the strikes!
Of the 31 dark stores in the Gurugram area, only a handful are operational, a clear count on the number of stores being discontinued could not be found.
As a result of said strikes, the competitors of Blinkit have seen a boom in the Gurugram based orders. Zepto has reported a 40% jump in the orders from Delhi-NCR, Instamart up 20% while BigBasket reported 28% and 43% surge in orders from Gurgaon and Noida respectively ever since the strikes began.
Amidst all this, controversial startup founder Ashneer Grover has spoken against the 10-minute delivery business model. He claims that the model 'has no economics' is acting as a critic of the business model.
Food Delivery giant Zomato had successfully acquired Blinkit in August 2022. The q-commerce company has not disclosed any plans to go public yet.
- Aman Agarwal
