A public defence mounted by Deepinder Goyal, CEO of Eternal, over the handling of a December 31 gig worker strike has sharply polarised opinion, with his claims and tone drawing sustained criticism from netizens and labour groups even as a section of startup founders, investors and industry executives rallied to his support.
Goyal’s posts on X sought to project operational resilience amid the protest. He said Zomato and Blinkit operations on New Year’s eve ran “unaffected by calls for strikes,” adding that the platforms delivered at a record pace without offering any additional incentives beyond routine New Year surge payouts. According to him, 450,000 delivery partners across both platforms completed more than 7.5 million orders, an all-time high, with local law enforcement helping “keep the small number of miscreants in check”.
Those claims immediately ran into pushback online. Comedian-activist Kunal Kamra questioned the absence of empathy in the messaging and demanded greater transparency on worker economics, asking platforms to disclose aggregate data on hours worked, distances travelled, annual compensation and workplace accidents. “If you tell me they were at least paid Rs 50 every hour they were on the app, I’ll never tweet about gig workers again,” Kamra wrote, directly challenging Goyal’s assertions.
At the same time, Goyal used the platform to defend the much-criticised 10-minute delivery model, stating that it is “enabled by the density of stores around your homes, not by asking delivery partners to drive fast”. He said delivery partners do not see timers on their apps, orders are picked and packed within 2.5 minutes, and riders typically cover under 2 km in about eight minutes at an average speed of 15 kmph.
Economics of Speed
That defence, however, cut little ice with several public commentators. Actor-comedian Vir Das described worker demands for regulation under labour laws, fair wages and social security as “reasonable,” while YouTuber Dhruv Rathee asked Goyal to publish average hourly earnings to allow comparisons with formal entry-level jobs. Goyal responded by saying he would make public a “fact sheet” on worker earnings by Saturday.
Industry voices were more divided. Former Jet Airways Chief Executive Sanjiv Kapoor questioned whether 10-minute deliveries were necessary outside medical emergencies, suggesting that delivery windows of 30 to 60 minutes could reduce pressure on workers without materially compromising consumer convenience.
Goyal also posted videos alleging “violent protests” by what he called “agents of political interests,” claiming some protesters were not even delivery partners. He framed the gig economy as “one of India’s largest organised job creation engines,” providing “insurance, fair, timely and predictable wages,” and said tips, which riders receive in full, are “over and above the wages (Rs 25,000-30,000 per month) that we quote”.
Those remarks drew a sharp rebuttal from labour groups. The Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union said that while forcing anyone to protest was a criminal act, discrediting an entire workers’ movement as “politically motivated” without evidence was “dangerous and dishonest”. Founder-president, Shaik Salauddin said the posts reflected “the same old playbook used to delegitimise farmers’ and students’ movements,” disputing the earnings narrative. “Tips are not wages. Riders earn Rs 25,000–30,000 per month through their work – tips are only an occasional add-on. Using ‘tips’ to justify low pay is misleading,” he said.
Polarized Industry
Even as criticism mounted online, a cluster of founders and investors publicly backed Goyal. Sanjeev Bikhchandani, founder of Info Edge, dismissed critics as “Champagne Socialists” and defended the quick commerce model. TV Mohandas Pai, chairman of Manipal Global Education and Aarin Capital, urged Goyal to “stay strong” and “expose these violent extremists,” while Capitalmind’s CEO, Deepak Shenoy argued that workers “don’t feel oppressed enough” to sustain prolonged strikes. Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm echoed Goyal’s argument that quick commerce is driven by dense networks of dark stores, calling it “a modern tech-enabled assembly line for service delivery”.
In a broader philosophical note, Goyal wrote that while “class divides kept the labour of the poor invisible to the rich” for centuries, the gig economy had “shattered that invisibility, at unprecedented scale,” arguing that society could either use this discomfort to improve systems or “ban and over-regulate our way back into ignorance”.
However, several reports in the past few months show that the earnings of the delivery workers have come under sustained pressure.