Bengaluru

Zomato

Jain University

Karnataka

V Kumar Babu delivers food for a living, but that’s not all the 33-year-old wants to do. By August, he wants to start a supply-chain business of medicines inwith Rs 50,000 and more he has saved up. Next, he plans to get married. And only after all that is done, does he plan to go back to college.“I was studying for my arts degree at a government college in Mandya but had to discontinue it in three months due to financial problems at home. Then I came to Bengaluru, worked at a garment factory, bought a car on loan and became a driver, and now I am a delivery partner. I will continue to deliver food while running my business. That’s the plan.”Traditionally, Indians have wanted to study – graduate (maybe do a Masters) and then start earning. But that is changing among people like Babu, as an internal survey, ‘The stories behind the red t-shirts’, released by food discovery-delivery companyon their blog site recently suggests. Turns out, of the 1.8 lakh-plus delivery partners Zomato has all over India, 52% want to buy a car someday, 16% wish to own a house and 5% would like to get a motorbike. Also on their bucket list is travel. While four per cent wants to fly abroad at least once, two per cent is happy to wander around India.But only 15% want to complete their education.Significant this is if you consider, for example, out of 29,000 of their delivery partners in Bengaluru, 7% have not studied beyond Class 10, 31% have dropped out after Class 10, and 41% terminated their studies after Class 12. Among the rest, 4% have done their PUC and 13% and 4% of them are graduates and post-graduates respectively. Even more so when these food farers are still young - their median age is 25, says the survey. Even at Swiggy, 95% of their fleet has studied till Class 10 and 12.Like 29-year-old Sameer Mattoo, who’s been working as a delivery partner with Swiggy since February 2018. He stopped studying after Class 10. He began working as a graphic designer, making company logos and such. “I was never too good at studies,” he says. “Maybe if I had, I could have done more.” When the graphic design didn’t fetch him much money (“My salary wasn’t increasing,” he says), he started a business selling Kashmiri shawls and handicrafts, in 2016. A year later, he got married. “The business was not doing well and I wanted to provide a better life for my wife and myself,” he says. At Swiggy, he earns up to Rs 25,000 a month as a delivery partner, while his wife runs the business. Mattoo aspires to put money back into the business, support his family, buy a car, and travel, “maybe to Singapore and Malaysia”, he says. To Mattoo, work is more important than studying. “I need to earn and make my life better and take care of my family”, he says. His sentiment is corroborated by the survey, which found that 83% of delivery partners had a family dependency.Family (of six) is also what drives 20-year-old Farha Fathima. After she completed her IInd PUC, she took up a job but wasn’t too happy with it. Today, 2.5 months into her job as a delivery partner with Swiggy, she says she is “satisfied”. “I’m loving it because how much we make depends on us. I’m able to put Rs15,000 out of that towards home expenses.” She plans to do her B.Com via correspondence, and then get into business with her father’s help.Pradeep S, a delivery partner with Zomato, believes education is important, but not simply to bag a good job. The 31-year-old BCom graduate always wanted to run a business. He ran a small CD shop that his family owned in BTM Layout but they had to shut it down. “Then I worked as a distribution partner with an e-commerce firm. Eight months ago I joined Zomato as a delivery partner. My goal is to open an Andhra-style restaurant and make my mother the cashier. Only when that is done will I think of getting married. As a delivery partner I understand which kind of restaurant works, but I wanted to be sure before investing my money.”This trend of prioritising money over education is not new, says Dr Sandeep Shastri, Pro Vice Chancellor,. He cites the first-ever Youth Survey done inon behalf of the Knowledge Commission of the state government (2012), which found that people (between the ages of 16-34) who were working saw earning as a priority. “When people take a break from education and start earning, they experience a sense of independence. Then they are not keen to go back to formal, full-time learning again, because it will come in the way of their earning.” The survey also found an important difference between people who were working and those aspiring to earn money. “Those who were studying gave a heightened importance to education, while the other group thought of work as more important,” Shastri adds.