India’s festive shopping season has failed to deliver a major boost to gig-worker earnings, with e-commerce firms hiring fewer seasonal workers than planned and delivery payouts remaining largely flat despite stronger demand in quick commerce.
Bengaluru, October 25 — The festive shopping rush has provided an uneven boost to India’s gig economy, with e-commerce and quick-commerce companies seeing different hiring trends while worker earnings remain largely unchanged.
Traditional e-commerce platforms hired around 20-30% fewer seasonal workers than planned, as companies adjusted staffing requirements amid softer-than-expected demand.
Quick-commerce platforms, meanwhile, saw faster growth in demand for gig workers, but companies largely relied on attendance- and performance-linked incentives rather than increasing base payouts.
The festive season has therefore produced sharply different trends across the two segments.
According to staffing firms cited in the report, quick-commerce demand grew around 18% this festive season, compared with roughly 12% growth in e-commerce.
However, this increase in demand has not translated into proportionately higher earnings for workers.
Delivery payouts in traditional e-commerce have fallen sharply compared with last year.
The report said e-commerce delivery payouts declined to around ₹12-15 per shipment from ₹25-28 last year.
In quick commerce, payouts have remained broadly stable at around ₹20-30 per order, with additional peak-period incentives of roughly ₹8-15 in some cases.
Companies are increasingly linking additional payments to factors such as worker attendance, delivery performance and meeting order targets instead of raising fixed compensation.
Festive sales themselves also showed mixed trends.
Delivery dispatches during the first 10 days of major online festive sales, including Amazon’s Great Indian Festival and Flipkart’s Big Billion Days, declined around 10-12% year-on-year, while gross merchandise value also fell roughly 7-10%.
At the same time, quick commerce continued to expand faster, supported by growing demand for rapid delivery of groceries and other everyday products.
Worker wages have remained largely unchanged apart from revisions linked to state wage structures.
Average monthly earnings, including performance bonuses, have also stayed broadly flat, according to staffing-industry executives.
Fixed wages continue to account for around 80-85% of worker earnings, with the remainder coming through variable incentives and bonuses.
Warehouse employment has increased around 12% year-on-year, but the growth has largely been driven by the opening of new facilities and expansion into additional cities rather than temporary festive-season hiring.
The trends suggest that India’s expanding quick-commerce sector is creating more gig-work opportunities, but rising order volumes are not necessarily translating into significantly higher income for workers.
