Roadrunnr’s Ejipura office in Bangalore was vandalized today by irate employees who were protesting a change in their salary structure. The employees damaged office furniture and broke glass windows. This is the 2nd case of employee unrest this month in the Indian startup space after TinyOwl employees had held the company’s cofounder hostage for over 2 days in Pune.
Roadrunnr is a logistics startup offering on-demand delivery carriers, and are largely tied up with food delivery startups. The delivery boys at the company were unhappy after the management announced a change in their salary structure. The delivery boys were earlier paid on a per hour basis, but the company attempted to restructure their salaries by making payment of Rs. 45 and Rs. 55 per delivery. According to some disgruntled employees this would reduce their per monthly earning of approx. Rs.25, 000 by almost 50%. The company had also reduced their basic salary from Rs. 18,000 per month to Rs.15, 000 and discontinued the conveyance allowance. The employees demanded a 3 month salary, as they intended to quit with the change of policy.
Roadrunnr in turn spoke with OfficeChai and claimed that they’d also provided additional benefits to the employees, including Rs. 100 bonus per day for 3 deliveries and Rs. 700 for 15 orders in a week. The company says that 96% of their staff does more than 6 orders per day, which results in a payout of Rs. 20,000 per month.
Shivu, one of the striking employees said, “We wanted to talk it out, but the situation got aggravated when the owner said it’s his company and can do what he wants with it. That’s when delivery boys got mad and started breaking office stuff.”
It is reported that the company sensing trouble had resorted to hiring 15 bouncers. Mr. Vivek Poddar, senior manager, operations, of the startup, clarifies, “We have changed our payment policy and the delivery boys are resisting it. Initially it was on hourly basis, now it’s on per order; so the lazy ones are resisting it.” He was confident that the Operations Director, who was in contact with the police, would sort out the problem soon. The trouble was created by just a handful of “bad drivers” from their delivery crew of 1000 people. “The rest are out there providing services,” he said. The company also exclusively told OfficeChai that the people who attacked the office were wearing Roadrunnr T shirts, but CCTV footage showed that they were not Roadrunnr employees.