Eternal CEO Deepinder Goyal said the company and Blinkit achieved record delivery volumes on Wednesday, processing over 7.5 million orders, marking an all-time high, even as calls for strikes circulated among delivery partners over recent days.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday, Goyal said the company’s food and quick commerce platforms collectively facilitated deliveries to more than 6.3 million customers through 450,000 delivery partners.
“Support from local law enforcement helped keep the small number of miscreants in check,” Goyal stated. He noted that while New Year’s Eve typically sees higher incentives than usual, Wednesday’s operations were conducted under normal incentive structures similar to previous years.
Goyal thanked delivery partners “who showed up despite intimidation, stood their ground, and chose honest work and progress,” while also expressing gratitude to local authorities for “clear enforcement and swift coordination.”
Record Participation vs. Union Narratives
In a broader defense of the gig economy model, Goyal argued that “if a system were fundamentally unfair, it would not consistently attract and retain so many people who choose to work within it.” He urged stakeholders not to be “swept up by narratives pushed by vested interests.”
The Eternal CEO positioned the gig economy as “one of India’s largest organised job creation engines,” suggesting its impact would compound over time as delivery partners’ children, “supported by stable incomes and education, enter the workforce and help transform our country at scale.”
Incentives and Impasse
The nationwide strike call by delivery worker unions for December 31 , the second in a week after a similar action on December 25, had largely fizzled out as platforms deployed surge incentives to counter dissent. Operations remained largely unaffected across major metros despite union claims of 150,000 participants.
According to worker’s app notifications reviewed by FE, Blinkit had offered payouts of Rs 120-150 per order between 6 pm and midnight on New Year’s Eve, promising total earnings of up to Rs 3,000 depending on order volumes.
Union leaders, however, termed the incentive spike as propaganda. “This is propaganda to dilute the strike rather than a genuine solution to long-standing issues of pay cuts and unsafe work pressure,” Shaik Salauddin, general secretary of the Indian Federation of App-Based Transport Workers (IFAT), had told FE.
Worker demands include regulation of platform companies under labour laws, a ban on “10-minute delivery” models, an end to arbitrary ID blocking, fair wages, and social security. The development comes amid ongoing debates about gig worker rights and compensation in India’s rapidly growing platform economy.