India sees about 30-35 million (300 to 350 lakh) users a month across food delivery and quick commerce. And yet, according to reports, only 3 to 5 percent or one in 25 of these users add a tip.
Deepinder Goyal, founder and CEO, Zomato, recently tweeted that fewer than 5 percent of orders on Zomato include a tip, while the figure is even lower—around 2.5 percent—on Blinkit.
The tipping amount is nothing to write home about either. On average, tips earned per hour on Zomato amount to just a few rupees—Rs 2.6 in 2025, marginally up from Rs 2.4 in 2024, Goyal added.
Even as the debate around ultrafast, 10-minute delivery rages on, tipping as part of renumeration is also back in the limelight, raising questions about tipping culture, wages and service.
India has never been a high tipping country. Whether at restaurants, or for delivery, customers often see service as something already paid for.
While at restaurants customers scrutinise the bill for service charges and don’t add any additional tips, platform data too reflects this cultural reality. A quick-commerce delivery rider may arrive at the same doorstep multiple times a day, sometimes delivering another item within minutes—yet walk away without any tip. “Good service is, in some sense, expected as part of the experience or product in India,” says Pranav Jindal, associate professor, marketing, Indian School of Business (ISB).
Contrast this with the United States where tipping is deeply woven into everyday service culture, often ranging between 15 and 20 percent of a restaurant bill. Platforms such as Uber Eats and DoorDash too see between 74 and 88 percent of orders receiving tips.
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Goyal has repeatedly acknowledged this gap. In early January, he wrote on X: “Tips are a small part of a rider’s overall income. We aren’t a good tipping economy. All tips get passed on to our riders as is, without any deductions.”
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In the US, for workers at restaurants, cafés, and even small ice-cream parlours, tips frequently make up a significant share of take-home pay. For delivery workers too, customer gratuities account for a substantial portion of delivery workers’ income.
In India, tipping forms just a small portion of earnings. According to a Moneycontrol report, delivery partners would have earned a maximum of Rs 150 crore in tips in 2025. With about 600,000 delivery partners in the quick commerce ecosystem, that translates to an average of about Rs 2500 per head per year, the report added.
According to Jindal, tipping norms are also closely tied to how minimum wages are structured across countries. In the US, for instance, “different states differ in terms of whether minimum wages for servers at restaurants include tips or not,” a system that has left servers in several states earning below the official minimum wage, on the assumption that tips will push their earnings above the threshold. As a result, he notes, “there is now an expectation that servers should be given a tip regardless of the service provided,” an expectation that has steadily spilled into other sectors—including fast food outlets, cabs, car rentals, salons and spas—where service levels are minimal but tipping is increasingly normalised.
In countries such as India, he says, minimum wage laws are “much more lax or are not binding” and therefore do not automatically translate into an expectation that customers must tip. Applying this lens to gig work, Jindal adds that while tipping can become routine when workers earn less than peers with similar skills in formal employment, it should ideally function as “a reward for good service (akin to a bonus)” rather than a substitute for wages.
But the question remains: Does tipping absolve platforms from improving base pay? Jindal says, “This is difficult to determine in the absence of minimum wage laws or if minimum wages are not binding.” Gig workers can always find another job if they feel that the platform is exploiting them by offering low wages. He adds, ”The fact that platforms can easily hire gig workers more likely indicates that wages and tips (combined) are (more than) commensurate with the skills possessed by the gig workers.”
In the United States, tipping is not legally mandatory but is deeply embedded in everyday transactions, especially in restaurants, bars, salons, ride-hailing, and delivery services. Gratuities of 15–20 percent are considered standard, and failing to tip is widely viewed as socially unacceptable.
Across much of Western Europe, the logic is different. Countries such as France and Germany typically fold service into menu prices, with customers rounding up or leaving a modest extra amount—often 5–10 percent—only when service stands out. In the UK, tips in the range of 10–12.5 percent are common if no service charge has already been added. Crucially, choosing not to tip is rarely interpreted as a moral lapse, reflecting broader assumptions around fixed wages and employer responsibility.
Unlike the US and parts of Europe, Japan traditionally discourages tipping. Good service is framed as professional pride and “omotenashi” (wholehearted hospitality), already priced into the bill, so an extra payment can feel awkward—or even be refused. Staff may chase a customer to return “forgotten” money; some restaurants explicitly remind visitors that tipping isn’t required.
First Published: Jan 07, 2026, 16:18
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