Delivery jobs should be seen as flexible employment, not gig work: Swiggy executive
Davos (PTI): Calling the large force of delivery partners in India a 'third pillar' of the job market, a top Swiggy executive has said their job should be seen as flexible employment rather than gig work.
"Gig sounds like a little bit of a fancy term, but the reality is it's flexible employment. And I truly see this as a third pillar," Swiggy's Food Marketplace CEO Rohit Kapoor said.
Speaking to PTI here on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, he said the first pillar is the formal employment sector, where you sign up for a long-term job with a company and work there.
"Second is, of course, entrepreneurship, and by entrepreneurship I don't mean the fundraisers or the large businesses. I mean everybody who's chosen to work on their own, be it opening a shop or running a small service business or whatever it is," he said.
"I think this (delivery workforce) truly is the creation of a third leg to creating livelihoods. And this also flows across, so it's not like the people who are in the formal sector don't come here and don't go back," he said.
Sharing numbers, he said, almost 2.5 million people would have worked on the Swiggy platform at some point last year.
"And this is just our platform, and therefore, the scale of this is very large. And frankly, I think this is bound to grow," he said.
He said these people are making their own choices to do this work.
He welcomed the government's social security code and said it's in the right direction.
"My only request to every stakeholder is treat it truly as different from formal employment. The moment you apply the same parameters, you will end up throttling something which is truly different," he said.
"We're deeply interested in terms of making sure that this grows. And also, I think we have a job cut out for both improving this on every dimension possible over time, and also in explaining a lot more to people in terms of what the characteristics of this sector are, who is actually doing it," he said.
"For example, it's not monolithic. There are people who want to do this long-term. There are people who want to do this just for the month. There are students who want to do this for extra income, and there are people who want to do it for a second income.
"There are a whole lot of people who come into the flexible employment category or flexible category," Kapoor said.
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Man booked for duping firm of Rs 6 cr by posing as Infosys CSR official
Bengaluru (PTI): An FIR has been registered against a man and his accomplices for allegedly cheating a firm of Rs 6 crore by falsely claiming to be associated with an IT company and promising to facilitate CSR funds for its projects, police said on Friday.
The crime is said to have taken place between September 1, 2025 and March 20, 2026, and after consultation with legal experts the company decided to file a complaint at the Devanahalli police station here, they said.
The FIR was registered on March 30 following a complaint by Mysore Mercantile Company, alleging that a person named Gagan N Deep approached them, posing as the Regional Head (CSR) at Infosys Ltd, they said.
According to the FIR, Deep claimed he reported to senior officials - Harsh J, Senior Regional Manager - Infrastructure, Facilities Operation, Public Relations and CSR Works, and Niladri Prasad Mishra, Senior Vice President and Head - Global Infrastructure and Climate Action.
The FIR alleged that the accused expressed interest in the activities of their associated trust, Heggunje Rajeeva Shetty Charitable Trust, Bangalore, and assured facilitation of CSR funds from Infosys Ltd.
It further stated that the accused sent a team of four to five individuals representing Infosys, including persons identified as Chethan and Tejas, to Udupi, Mangaluru and other places to verify the trust’s activities.
According to the complaint, the accused subsequently induced the complainant to pay an Earnest Money Deposit (EMD) to alleged regular vendors of Infosys as a condition for approval of CSR grants.
The complainant stated that a total amount of Rs 6 crore was paid, including Rs 1.75 crore through demand drafts in favour of Anitha Ventures and Rs 3.75 crore through demand drafts in favour of ANS Engineerings, apart from an additional cash payment of Rs 30 lakh allegedly handed over to the accused through his driver near Nandi Upachar Hotel in Devanahalli, as per his instructions.
The FIR further alleged that the accused issued a purported sanction letter dated October 21, 2025, allegedly from Infosys bearing the signature of Mishra, and executed a grant agreement dated January 8, 2026 between Infosys and the charitable trust for the construction of more than 855 houses across Karnataka with a total grant of Rs 179 crore.
Another grant agreement dated January 13, 2026 was also executed for construction of primary health care centres across the state with a total grant of Rs 178 crore, it stated.
However, the complainant later suspected that the representations made by the accused were false, the documents were fabricated, and the entire transaction was fraudulent in nature, as the accused dishonestly induced them to part with substantial amounts under the pretext of EMD for CSR grants.
"Despite repeated follow-ups neither has any grant materialised nor have the amounts been returned, and the accused is now unresponsive and deliberately avoiding communication," the FIR added.
A case has been registered under various provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, including Section 316(2) (criminal breach of trust), Section 319(2) (cheating by personation), Section 336(3) (forgery for the purpose of cheating), police said, adding that further investigation into the matter is underway.
Efforts are being made to nab the suspects in the case, they added.
