The novel Covid-19 has made everyone stay inside their homes and leading to a crisis of grocery availability. Hyperlocal delivery platforms like Swiggy’s Supr Daily, Dunzo and Milk Basket have been adapting to the situations and delivering the requirements to their customers but they have increased the prices for delivery. This was done in order to make up for the loss of workforce and revenue. Maintaining hygiene, increased salary for delivery executives and conserving cash for operations are major reasons for surge in delivery fee.
Milk Basket CEO, Anant Goel addresses his customers and told them about the increased fee due to heavy losses for the company. Supr Daily has notified its consumers that it will charge Rs. 2 per litre for fresh milk and Rs. 20 for fresh orders. The companies have also started functioning within allotted time frame usually from early morning to before 10 PM.
The new addition, Genie in Dunzo and Swiggy has also started levying more charges. Swiggy Super, a VAS which provided free delivery from Swiggy is also paused for time being. The average salary of a delivery executive has also hiked from 15-20K to 30K given that companies have to pay more to get more employees amidst shortage. This has led to very low or nil profits for the companies.
Dunzo, which is backed by Google has seen a surge twice the normal rate in delivery fee. Swiggy used to offer free delivery for order above a few hundreds and Rs. 35 for less than a hundred. The charge has now increased to Rs. 70 for orders below Rs. 299 and Rs. 45 for above that. Companies are doing anything and everything to survive in such economic crisis.