The Saturday Story | I hit the road as a food delivery agent... Guess how much I made?

It was an ordinary day in July. I was riding home after meeting a friend. Traffic through Koramangala was slow. There were delivery agents to my left and right. The more I looked around, the more I saw them behind me, at the signals ahead, and weaving in and out of every lane. Going by their t-shirts and bags, they were on their way to pick or drop food, grocery, and parcels.

It started to rain, and while the others stopped under whatever shelter they could find, the delivery agents did not. They put on the raincoats quickly, and continued. Somebody was waiting for them — craving pizza, expecting coriander to finish a dish, or fretting about baby diapers.

Food delivery agents are, in an older parlance, freelancers. Yet, they work like full-time employees, clocking eight hours a day and more. Are they paid well? Are they drawn to the freedom of working only when they feel like it? I kept thinking about their work culture as I accelerated.

Two weeks later, I signed up as a food delivery agent. I wanted the answers, and I wanted them first hand.

This was the quickest ‘job’ I had bagged. I sent no CV. I was not interviewed. I didn’t fill those annoying onboarding forms. There was no human recruiter involved. I downloaded a food delivery app. I entered basic personal details and uploaded my driving licence, and Aadhaar card for background verification. The only skill I needed to bring to the table was the ability to ride a two-wheeler. In under 10 minutes, I was
on board. Through in- app tutorials, I now oriented myself on how to fulfil orders, how to raise disputes, how to claim insurance, how to call for help…

Like a video game

I am a full-time video producer with Deccan Herald. After finishing my work on a Monday, I headed to Church Street to moonlight as a food delivery agent. The street is right behind our office in central Bengaluru and packed with food outlets. As soon as I got there, I opened the app and tapped a button to go ‘live’. My first order popped up quickly. I swiped right to accept the assignment. The clock started ticking. Felt like I was playing a video game!

The restaurant was 450 metres away but I rode longer because Church Street is one-way. There was no parking around the restaurant, so I parked my bike at a distance and walked back. After climbing two flights of stairs, I arrived at my pick-up location, an outlet famous for grilled chicken, and confirmed that on the app by swiping right. I identified myself and told the cashier the order number. He handed me a brown package and I swiped right to say I had picked up the order. I put the food inside my office backpack. I would need to work for two days to receive a food delivery bag and a jersey from the company. I would also need to pay for it.

The drop was 7 km away, in Indiranagar. Easily, every 20th rider was out to deliver something, and a majority of them belonged either to a red or orange food battalion. I arrived at a residential area. In the dark, I could not figure out which apartment to enter. I called up the customer and she guided me to her flat.

My heart started racing. The package got squished inside my bag and oil stains were showing on it. The lift opened on the third floor. I knocked. The customer opened the door, took the package without complaining and thanked me. Phew! Yet, something made me uneasy. ‘Order delivered’, I logged in and hurried to catch the lift.

When the customer opened her door, it hit me that the delivery job entails meeting and talking to strangers. It doesn’t come naturally to me. It didn’t help that my face was sweaty and my hair messy. I was feeling out of my skin. I decided to calm down and enjoy my little accomplishment. I had earned Rs 95.83 in 35 minutes.

Uncle, cash

As soon as I returned to my bike, my app glowed with a notification. Another order. I headed to a cloud kitchen nearby. After taking the paan-stained, dimly lit stairs, I was greeted by the smell of garlic and spring onion and the sizzling sound of woks in the kitchen area. An agent was already waiting for his pick-up. “Are you here for delivery?” he asked me in Kannada. “I noticed your bike. I have not seen any delivery agent riding an Enfield,” he explained. My bike registration number gave away that I was from Hassan and he was delighted. “I lived in Hassan for two years. Good place,” he continued.

My order was ready and it was time to leave. “Keep it vertical or the gravy will spill,” a staffer cautioned me as he handed over the package of noodles. I kept it on the petrol tank of my bike and rode for 7 km. I dropped off the food at a pharma clinic and bolted towards my bike to log off for the day. “Uncle, don’t you need money?” the customer, a young woman, called out. It was a cash-on-delivery order. If not for her honesty, I would have had to foot the bill, Rs 424. She paid, and I earned Rs 75.07.

I had made Rs 171 in an hour. Technically my earnings would be lesser because these platforms don’t reimburse fuel bills. The agents have to bear it, I would gather. They don’t even cover the costs for repairing the vehicle or servicing it.

Biryani scare

The difference between my day job and my gig work was becoming obvious. For full-time employees across the board, coming late to the office once in a while, being less productive on some days, and even going on week-long leave for a holiday is okay. It does not dent our salaries.

But delivery workers’ earnings depend solely on the number of orders they fulfil. Heat, rain, potholes, flooded roads, fallen branches, aggressive strays, broken lifts, customers who don’t answer calls in time — they are up against many uncertainties. The race to reach our doorstep is such that many delivery agents ride dangerously, on the wrong side, on footpaths, without helmets. Some don’t find time to eat or take a bio-break.

One-way roads turned out to be my pet peeve. Once, my pick-up was cancelled and reassigned to another delivery agent as I was ‘late’ to the location, a chaat and sweets shop on Commercial Street. The truth is, I had reached the one-way road where the shop is located but could not spot it. I parked my bike in the next lane by paying Rs 15 and rushed to find it by foot. There it was, tucked in a mosaic of tiny shops and loud signboards. But my efforts had failed to impress the algorithm.

I went into the shop nonetheless. It was 4 pm. I hadn’t had lunch yet. I ordered pav bhaji. Halfway through the meal, an order popped up on my app. I swiped right, took big bites, chugged down some water, and raced out.

Working on this story, I spoke to many gig workers. A delivery worker once dropped off a biryani order under a bridge past midnight. When he asked the group of young men to settle the bill, about Rs 1,500, they threatened to beat him up. They looked drunk. Over a call, his colleague asked him to stay put till he reached there to help. But he was petrified; he fled.

Good, decent, bad

Food delivery is a game. The more targets you meet, the more the money you make. Incentives are also waiting to be unlocked. Lunch and dinner hours and midnight slots pay better. Sample the earnings per delivery: Rs 70 to Rs 100 from 6 am-7 am, Rs 80 to Rs 110 from 12 pm-2 pm, and Rs 165-Rs 225 from 12 am-1 am. There are more rewards to be reaped on weekends and rainy days too.

This is not as straightforward as it seems. App-based food delivery platforms are often criticised for manipulating per-trip incomes, paying different incentives to different agents (linked to ratings), and blocking those who complain.

Gig workers say they are often fined without getting a chance to explain. A man was sacked because he did not accept more than four orders even after logging in. His relative had died and the grieving man had forgotten to log off, I was told. Delivery workers say they are only accounts, not humans, for the apps, and that’s their biggest grievance.

A ‘decent day’ is when they earn Rs 600, and a ‘good day’ is when they make Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,500, and this requires being on the road for 12 hours at least. ‘Bad days’ can be really bad. A food delivery worker from Mandya said, “Earnings have come down from Rs 30 per km to Rs 5-Rs 6 per km now.” Another man I met had switched to a different gig work because of consistent low pay. He drives cabs now. “At least here, the apps pay for the waiting time,” he explained.

What’s the draw?

On the one hand, delivery workers say they barely make enough to afford their children’s education, repay home loans, meet medical expenses, and eat out with families once in a while. On the other hand, 70,000 to 10 lakh people are engaged in food delivery in India. I was told Yelahanka alone has more than 800 delivery workers, a majority full-timers.

App-based gig work is not as lucrative as it was four years ago and that is at the heart of the problem. According to Vinay Sarathy of the United Food Delivery Partners’ Union, on an average, gig workers in Bengaluru earn Rs 15,000 a month, down from Rs 25,000 previously. It is a pittance if you factor in their gruelling work conditions and lack of social security benefits
like ESI and PF, he believes.

“It is challenging but what can be done?” the delivery workers told me. Many are school dropouts, or college graduates who could not land a job. They take on delivery work as it is a low-skill gig, and language is not a barrier as human interaction is minimal.

A farmer from Ballari comes to Bengaluru in the non-farming months to work in food delivery. As per Sarathy, young men on the outskirts of Bengaluru routinely flock to the city to make a quick buck. “They work for 12-14 hours a day, earning Rs 1,000. They sleep in railway stations and bus stands or work all night. They go back in three-four days,” he said. Even IT professionals join the fleet on weekends to earn some extra cash, he added.

Many enjoy the freedom a gig arrangement brings. “I used to work in a garment factory. It was a controlling environment,” he said. Another finds it the most practical of all gigs: “In food delivery, the radius of your work is defined and the frequency of orders is high because Bengaluru has food outlets everywhere. That’s not quite the case with a courier or cab driver gig.”

Looking back

My gig took me to nooks I would have otherwise not gone to. In Cox Town, I was let into an apartment that looked like a white castle. In Fraser Town, I arrived at a slum with lanes so narrow that I feared I had hit a dead end. Children, playing spinning tops, assured me I was on the right path.

I met diverse customers. A working professional ordered a plum cake from an Iyengar bakery 8 km away. “I am going to my native place tonight. I wanted to take something authentic for my parents,” the resident of BTM Layout explained. At a PG accommodation in Shanti Nagar, a young man disputed the appearance of the food package I was delivering. “It doesn’t come in a white cloth bag like this,” he argued. It was the right order and he eventually accepted the box of kebabs politely.

On the last day of the experiment, I decided to clock in 7 hours. I was putting in between one and three hours until then. I ditched my Enfield and borrowed a scooter from my friend to save up on fuel. I got a double order — the pick-up was at a mall but the drop-offs were in different directions. These together earned me Rs 42. I took four orders in the next three hours; Rs 31 being my maximum earning. It was my last day and I wanted to score big. Gladly, my next trip was the longest thus far and fetched me the most — Rs 91.

By 10 pm, my eyes were burning and my head and back were hurting. I had travelled 25 km overall. I logged off.

Back in my room, I opened the app. I had made only Rs 360 in 7 hours. If I deduct Rs 100 towards the petrol expense, then Rs 260. I reviewed my total performance. I had delivered 22 orders in 14 hours over six days and earned Rs 1,103 and a 5-star rating. I got zero tips but a middle-aged woman gave me four toffees and that made me happy.