New Delhi: Sunil is a resident of Old Faridabad. If he could not pay the child's fees, he got a notice from the school. After much persuasion, they have taken a few days' time, and don't know from where they will pay the fees & house rent also has to be paid.

Sunil works in Blinkit, a delivery service company. The strike was raging in the company for the last few days. The condition is very bad. Sunil says that earlier he used to earn Rs.50 per order on delivery, then the company reduced it to Rs.25 and now it has come down to Rs.12-12.50. Above all the expenses of petrol and bike are yours. How is that possible? The workers went on strike. Let's see how much the topic is listened to. Sunil says that earlier he used to work with Grofers. It took a while to deliver the goods but the conditions were fine. Customers also used to get good discounts but after the takeover of Blinkit, the situation only worsened. The company, which claims to deliver the goods in 10 minutes, did not think anything about the pressure on the employees. Customers also get a discount of hardly 10 per cent. Earlier this discount was 25 to 30 percent. Means neither the customer benefits nor the employee.

This story is not of Sunil alone. Last year, many big companies in India started delivery services of home goods and food in ten minutes each. These ranged from established companies like Zomato to startups like Zepto and Blinkit. But none of the companies got the expected success.

In January this year, Zomato shut down its 10-minute delivery service Zomato Instant. The reason for this was that the company was neither seeing expansion nor profit in this market. Although the company said that it is doing its rebranding, a newspaper quoted a company official as saying that the company is not finding this service profitable and it is proving difficult to meet its daily expenses. Doubt it will start again.

A few days ago, the Economic Times newspaper published a report which examined the services that provide delivery in 10 minutes in different cities. The conditions were found to be very bad. There were many problems from time to time. Apart from Zomato, services working locally will also be able to survive in the market, there is doubt.

Zomato started this service in Gurugram last year, then it was started in Bengaluru. Other major players in this market include Dunzo which operates on a hyper-local delivery model and delivers from smaller locations. Apart from Bangalore, its services are also in Mumbai and Delhi and it has been given funding of $ 40 million by Google and other investors.

Services like Swiggy Go and Flipkart Quick are also available. According to the report, the online delivery market in India has grown rapidly in recent years and is expected to reach $15 billion in the next two years with a growth of over 50 per cent.

But, in the post-Covid situation, many challenges have also arisen for it. LocalCircles, a community social media platform, reported that the home delivery market in India had grown by 200% during the Covid lockdown, but the post-Covid situation and the global financial crisis have turned these estimates into speculation.

Shekhar Ramchandra works as a manager in a delivery service in Delhi. They say that there is a lot of pressure on such companies. Profits are decreasing, people's trust is breaking. They also want discounts, on time delivery and quality. Inflation is increasing. Employees also have to be seen. How is that possible? They say that nowadays a new startup comes in the market with new claims every day. It lasts for a few days, if it is new, then it would have given a discount, then everything disappeared. There is no business plan, you lose your breath in a short time.

World situation

German news website DW World has published a report about the situation in the world.

According to the report, during Covid, the idea of ​​delivering in ten minutes around the world seems to be crumbling. Many companies who were delivering food also made promises of delivery in ten minutes and now they are dying. More recently, Milkran, another start-up that claimed 10-minute delivery in Australia, shut down, leaving 400 of its workers jobless. Even before Milkran, many companies that delivered orders in 10 minutes went bankrupt. Three of these were startup companies from Australia.

The company called Send was closed in May last year. Volley then closed its doors in November, and that month Kolab filed the paperwork to declare itself bankrupt. Apart from this, German company Foodora left the market in 2018 and British company Deliveroo stopped operating in Australia last yearIn this context, the website quoted research by Mark Humphrey-Jenner, associate professor of finance at the University of New South Wales, as saying that the idea of ​​home delivery of goods in 10 minutes may have been inspired by the idea that the market would expand and size. Increasing will bring profit. But many startup companies take time to turn profitable. According to Professor Jenner, Amazon was founded in 1994 and had to wait until 2003 to turn profitable.

Regarding 10-minute delivery services in India, Professor of Economics Ramesh R. Prasad says that these services ran during Kovid in India and such companies also opened a lot. These companies have set up huge infrastructures. He did a lot of recruitment but probably he did not anticipate the market. Just like the boom of Kovid came and went, in the same way, there was a period of boom for these companies, now perhaps the situation is of their defeat.