IIT-Delhi researchers propose novel solution to ensure 'minimum income guarantee' to food-delivery agents

New Delhi: Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) here have proposed a solution to ensure fair compensation for food delivery agents and minimise the platform costs, officials said on Tuesday.

The solution called 'Work4Food', developed by an IIT-Delhi team, was recently presented at the prestigious International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

According to the officials, the gig economy model has been a driving force in the food-delivery industry, making it difficult for the delivery agents to secure their rightful earnings. Additionally, food-delivery platforms have faced challenges in increasing the delivery fees beyond a certain point, creating a complex dilemma for all the stakeholders involved.

"We have developed an order-assignment algorithm (that determines which delivery agent gets which order) to ensure that each delivery person earns more than the minimum wage. To achieve this without increasing the cost for the platforms or the consumers, we recommend utilising the delivery workers more efficiently and reducing the habit of over-provisioning," said Abhijjnan Chakraborty, a professor at the computer science and engineering department of IIT-Delhi.

"Since the platforms gather a lot of data, by looking at historical patterns, they can predict the supply-demand dynamics in a particular location at a particular time and accordingly, onboard delivery workers if there is a need," he added.

Chakraborty explained that Work4Food's minimum income guarantee, coupled with the flexibility it offers to the platforms in onboarding delivery agents based on the demand-supply dynamics, minimises unnecessary travel — a common practice among the delivery agents to strategically position themselves for the next order.

"This can have a long-term effect on reducing the air pollution caused by vehicular emissions, at least until the entire delivery fleet transitions to battery-operated vehicles. While online food-delivery companies often cite the gig nature of the work and operational constraints as barriers to implementing local minimum-wage guarantees, the novel solution promises to address the issues," he said.

Besides Chakraborty, the other members of the team that has developed the solution are — Sayan Ranu and Amitabha Bagchi, professors at the same department, and PhD scholar Anjali.

"We believe that our proposed solution has the potential to revolutionise the way food-delivery platforms operate in India, creating a win-win situation for all the parties involved — delivery workers, platforms and customers — representing a significant step toward achieving fairness and equity within the food-delivery industry', Bagchi said.