Gig delivery workers across food delivery and quick commerce platforms are seeing earnings come under pressure as the supply of delivery partners grows faster than order volumes, staffing executives said, adding the imbalance may persist in the near term.
Eternal’s January-March quarter results highlight the divergence. In food delivery, average monthly active delivery partners rose 30% year-on-year to 576,000, while order volumes grew about 15%. In quick commerce, active partners jumped 121% to 409,000, outpacing a 93% rise in orders to 273.9 million.
Group CEO Albinder Dhindsa acknowledged the shift. “More part-timers are delivering, which raises active partners but reduces orders per shift,” he said.
Shift from Labour Shortage
The trend reverses last year’s shortage, when rapid demand growth, particularly in quick commerce, outpaced onboarding. Some stores had partner-to-store ratios as low as 3:1.
“Last year’s shortage was driven by a sharp demand spike… onboarding could not keep pace,” Balasubramanian Anantha Narayanan, senior vice president at TeamLease Services, said. “Now, higher partner availability is improving platform capacity but lowering utilisation per partner,” he added.
“With more partners competing for the same orders, earnings have become less predictable, with lower take-home incomes in some cases,” said Deepesh Gupta of Adecco India.
Declining Payouts
Per-order payouts have declined over the past two years. Rates have moved from Rs 34-42 in early 2024 to Rs 22-30 by September 2025 and Rs 15-27 by November 2025. By December, workers reported payouts as low as Rs 10-15 in some zones during protests.
“There should be a floor. Payments can’t fall to Rs 10-15,” Shaik Salauddin, founder president of the Telangana Gig and Platform Workers’ Union, said. “Workers are putting in longer hours to earn the same daily income,” he said.
Narayanan said compensation structures have also shifted. “Platforms now use incentive slabs, so partners must meet targets to match earlier base earnings. With supply-demand more balanced, there’s little pressure to raise rates,” he said.
While Eternal attributed partner growth to voluntary part-time participation, staffing firms said behaviour is adjusting. “Some full-time partners are cutting hours or working across platforms to sustain income as order allocation per partner falls,” Narayanan said.
Gupta said the effect is most visible in metros, where gig roles remain attractive due to flexibility and low entry barriers but rising supply is weighing on on-ground economics.
“What we are seeing is localised saturation where high-density zones have more partners than demand can absorb,” Narayanan said. Gupta added that partner density in such areas may make incremental opportunities less attractive over time.