Quick commerce firms brace for higher churn of dark store workers amid rising competition

Zomato plans to double Blinkit’s dark stores from 1,007 to 2,000 by year-end, while Swiggy Instamart aims to increase its count from 523 in March 2024 to over 1,046 by March 2025. Zepto is targeting 1,200 dark stores by March 2025, up from its current 700-750 in December, Mint has earlier reported.

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“Churn among warehouse workers and delivery partners will increase as quick commerce firms go full throttle to keep up with amplifying competition. We may also see platforms bump up salaries and incentives to keep workers happy for longer," said Madhav Krishna, founder and chief executive of Vahan.ai, a blue-collar recruitment platform backed by Y Combinator.

Frontline workers, including store staff and delivery partners, are critical for grocery and food delivery operations as the business model hinges on speed and easy staff availability. To support this growth, Zepto raised over $1.3 billion last year, and Zomato ₹8,500 crore for its quick commerce arm Blinkit.

Incentives

According to Vahan.ai’s Krishna, dark store workers earn ₹15,000-18,000 a month, with every job switch earning 5% more. Balasubramanian Narayanan, senior vice-president at TeamLease Services, a recruitment and human resource services firm, said additional incentives include attendance bonus of ₹2,500-3,000 for meeting monthly workday targets and performance incentive of ₹3,000 for achieving 97–98% accuracy. Together, this adds up to a potential of ₹6,000 extra on top of their regular salary, he said.

Quick commerce firms Swiggy and Zepto did not respond to Mint’s queries. A Zomato spokesperson said that it has created flexibility for delivery partners in terms of login time and duration, creating opportunities for them to earn as much as ₹28,000 on an average per month. It did not share specific details on dark store workers.

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According to data from Teamlease, attrition at quick commerce warehouses is 12-15% a month, against 8-10% in the overall e-commerce and logistics industry, and 6% at some of the older and more stable companies. Generally, for a dark store employee, the average tenure in a company is 7-8 months, despite many platforms offering one-year contracts, after which they receive a retention bonus. This essentially means a Zepto, Blinkit or Instamart is likely to see its entire dark store workforce change every year, adding to hiring costs for these hyper-funded players.

Swiggy’s voluntary attrition rate was about 34.5% in 2024 which includes frontline and call centre workforce. “Voluntary attrition continues to be high primarily due to churn in the frontline and call centre workforce that are prone to high attrition," according to the firm’s red herring prospectus.

Revolving dark-store doors

Every month, there are at least 8,000 to 10,000 open positions for such roles in quick commerce warehouses and dark stores, across metro cities in India where these platforms operate majorly. “If you want a dark store job, I can get you four offers today," said Teamlease’s Narayanan.

“Typically, within the same locality of a half a kilometer radius, you will find five or six dark stores by different companies. It is the same work. Once you experience one dark store, you can easily move to another dark store. If somebody pays ₹500 more, they'll jump, because why not?"

The total number of quick commerce dark stores is likely to touch 5,000-5,500 by the end of FY26 or earlier, generating a throughput of nearly $35-40 billion at an optimal level, HSBC said in a report on Wednesday. 

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Attrition also depends on local supply and demand. Areas like South Mumbai and Koramangala in Bengaluru see higher attrition, since these places have high demand but relatively few available workers. In contrast, areas like Andheri in Mumbai offer a balanced mix of supply and demand, while areas such as Thane have a surplus of labour and comparatively lower demand.

To be sure, attrition is high among delivery agents as well, touching as high as 15-20%, reports have earlier said. Nearly 1.5 million delivery partners worked with Zomato in 2024 alone, with most of them preferring to work part-time to make secondary income, the spokesperson for Zomato added.

Nature of work

Narayanan of Teamlease explained that attrition is high among dark store employees due to the unpredictable nature of workloads, where orders can vary drastically, sometimes doubling or tripling from one day to the next.

The sudden demand for additional staff, particularly during night shifts, often necessitates reassigning employees to different roles within the store as needed. Employees who start with the expectation of packing orders often find themselves tasked with heavy-duty work like loading and unloading goods. "You end up using these people interchangeably within a dark store," he said, adding that this lack of role stability is a major point of dissatisfaction. The high-pressure environment, where employees handle up to 150 orders a day in a fast-paced, repetitive manner adds to the dissatisfaction.

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Moreover, dark store workers get a fixed pay which does not vary on the number of orders processed, unlike in the case of delivery partners. “So, the motivation largely revolves around pay and hence platform loyalty is low," said Vahan.ai’s Krishna.