Festive Shopping Rush Proves Uneven Windfall for E-commerce and Quick-Commerce Workers

The festive shopping rush is proving an uneven windfall for the workers who keep the e-commerce and quick-commerce platforms running. While softer online sales have prompted e-commerce companies to cut seasonal hiring, the shift towards quick commerce is doing little to lift delivery partners’ earnings, with per-order payouts largely unchanged despite rising demand. Horizontal e-commerce platforms have hired 20-30% fewer seasonal workers than planned at the start of the year, while increasingly linking warehouse workers’ daily earnings to order volumes, according to staffing firms FE spoke to. Quick commerce, meanwhile, is seeing faster growth in demand for gig workers , but platforms are relying on attendance and performance-linked incentives rather than raising base payouts. The contrasting trends reflect an uneven festive season for workers. Delivery dispatches during the first 10 days of Amazon ’s Great Indian Festival and Flipkart ’s Big Billion Days, which began in early October, fell 10-12% year-on-year, while gross merchandise value declined 7-10%, according to Datum Intelligence. In contrast, quick commerce is gaining ground in grocery, which is expected to account for 9.5% of festive sales, up 2.5 percentage points from last year. Quick commerce is forecast to contribute 77% of grocery sales. Demand for gig workers in quick commerce is growing 18% this festive season, compared with 12% in e-commerce, according to Deepesh Gupta, director and head of general staffing at Adecco India. However, the increase in demand has not translated into proportionately higher earnings. For warehouse pickers, packers and loaders, base wages have remained largely unchanged from last year, apart from revisions in state wage structures. Average monthly earnings, including incentives and festive bonuses, have also stayed flat, with fixed pay accounting for 80-85% of earnings, Balasubramanian Anantha Narayanan, senior vice-president at TeamLease Services, said. Overall warehouse headcount has risen 12% year-on-year, largely due to new facilities and expansion into more cities, rather than seasonal recruitment. Companies are increasingly linking daily earnings to order volumes instead of adding workers on fixed monthly pay. Under these arrangements, a worker could earn Rs 900-1,100 on a peak day but only Rs 400-500 on a lean day, Narayanan said. Dark-store workers in quick commerce are seeing a similar trend, with base pay remaining flat despite increased hiring. Delivery partners face a different set of pressures. With e-commerce volumes weakening, per-shipment payouts on horizontal platforms have fallen to Rs 12-15 from Rs 25-28 last year, Gupta said. In quick commerce, per-order payouts are Rs 20-30, with peak-period additions of Rs 8-15, broadly unchanged from the Rs 22-30 average last festive season. The pressure reflects a wider imbalance between the supply of delivery partners and order growth, limiting the need for platforms to raise base rates. Workers say uncertain order volumes also make incentive targets harder to meet, forcing them to spend more time online to earn the same amount. “When orders are uncertain, incentive targets become harder to meet, forcing riders to stay online longer,” said Shaik Salauddin, founder-president of the Telangana Gig and Platform Workers’ Union and national general secretary of the Indian Federation of App-Based Transport Workers. The squeeze predates the current festive season. Quick-commerce payouts fell from Rs 34-42 per order in early 2024 to Rs 22-30 by the 2025 festive season, while e-commerce shipment payouts had dropped to Rs 15-16 in the six months to April this year, FE had reported.