E-commerce companies such as Flipkart, Zomato, Swiggy, Bigbasket, and Amazon have started offering insurance coverage and income tax protection plans for their local vendors, supply chain associates, and delivery partners to the COVID-19 case count soaring across the country. Most of the companies have purchased medical insurance covers for their delivery workforce ranging Rs:50000 to Rs:5 lakh both on the rolls and freelance staff. The companies, that are mostly in the e-commerce, are now buying insurance who have frontline workers and delivery boys a sum assured of up to Rs 5 lakh per person to cover against COVID-19 risks. They are providing medical and accident cover of up to Rs: 3 lakh and Rs 5 lakh for the employees and partners.
Apart from this, Flipkart offers a term life cover of 3lakh for employees and Rs: 25lakh as minimum term cover for full-time employees. Along with Flipkart, Swiggy, Zomato, and Big Basket gave also started to offering COVID-19 insurance to their delivery boys.
Zomato has 4000 employees and 2 lakh delivery partners and all these employees are covered for COVID-19 under the plan which is designed with ICICI Lombard General Insurance Co.Ltd. They also provide accidental and medical insurance to the delivery partners through a partnership with Acko General Insurance Ltd and also they are infected by COVID-19.
Swiggy try to provide options to their employees to personalize their medical policy as per their health profile if necessary. It also provides medical insurance to the family members of the delivery partners along with an income protection plan. It will also provide the delivery partners to get assured income for up to 14 days if they are hospitalized with these diseases.
The Online grocery supermarket also has bought insurance policy of COVID-19 for all their frontline and employees and both the Flipkart and Amazon also have insured their workforce and employees under their Employee State Insurance Scheme (ESIS).
India is the third-worst COVID-19 affected country in the world. Over the past few weeks, major cities and metros have seen a surge. The e-commerce firms that are engaged in food and delivery business face greater challenges and risk of loss in revenue, as they depend on delivery executives who have the chance to contract the respiratory disease given the nature of their operations. While e-commerce witnessed a large loss in demand in products during the COVID-19 induced lockdown, it was only permitted to the delivery of essential items, this also brought challenges and risks to the food and delivery business.
