India curbs ‘grocery under 10 minutes’. But riders must still fatally race

India tells platforms to curb 10-minute deliveries amid concerns for workers’ safety but there’s no incentive to comply.

New Delhi, India — Just moments before, they were both navigating the busiest traffic hours at an intersection in Noida, a satellite city of Delhi, delivering groceries at the doorstep. The next thing he knew, Himanshu Pal, 21, stood there, helpless, looking over the body of his colleague, rammed by a car.

His friend, Ankush, was “just 18, and just out of high school,” Pal told Al Jazeera. It was Ankush’s first day in a metropolitan city, after he came from his village in eastern Bihar, more than 1,000km (600 miles) away; he rented a cheap electric bike and signed up with Swiggy, one of India’s quick commerce giants.

Ankush packed his first order and tried to figure out how to reach the location – mandatorily within 10 minutes – when Pal held his hand and showed him the way around the app. “He was trying his best: looking at the phone, then on the road, a customer calling back; then on the phone, a traffic light, and then on the road again,” Pal recalled, from October last year.

“That was all. A car hit and left him dead at the signal.” Pal and his colleagues crowdfunded for an ambulance to take the body back to his village.

India’s rapid delivery services are a marvel to the rest of the world, competing to deliver everything from food to groceries and medicines to cigarettes to the country’s 430 million-strong middle class. Swiggy, where Ankush worked, and Zomato have been the dominant quick commerce platforms for more than a decade. But others have joined, too, including Zepto and Flipkart Minutes. In December 2024, Amazon entered the market with a 15-minute delivery service called Tez — which means “fast” in Hindi and Urdu.