Maharashtra embarks on a plan to extend its regulatory reach over food delivery, quick commerce, and ecommerce platforms, aiming to impose new environmental, tracking, and welfare measures amidst ongoing legal challenges in Karnataka.
Maharashtra is preparing to widen its regulatory reach over India’s fast-growing platform economy by proposing to bring food delivery, quick commerce and ecommerce operators under its bike-taxi framework. According to reporting by The Indian Express, the plan would require affected platforms to use electric vehicles, enable GPS-based tracking, provide insurance cover and pay 2% of each trip’s fare into a rider welfare fund. The proposal is still under review by the state’s law and judiciary department, and it has not yet received final approval.
The move could have significant cost implications for companies such as Swiggy, Zomato, Zepto and Meesho, which depend on large fleets of delivery partners across multiple states. One unresolved issue is how the proposed 2% levy would be calculated for delivery work, since food delivery, quick commerce and ecommerce do not operate on fixed ride fares in the way bike-taxi services do. The state has said the framework would apply to bike trips of less than 15 kilometres, while a dedicated transport portal would be created to monitor vehicles in real time.
The proposed welfare fund would be used for benefits including pensions, accident insurance, loans to buy electric vehicles and education support for drivers’ children. Maharashtra currently has no dedicated state regime for food delivery and ecommerce platforms, which are mainly governed by central laws including the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 and the Code on Social Security, 2020. That gap is part of why the plan is being watched closely by platform operators, which already argue that overlapping state and central rules can quickly become expensive and difficult to administer.
The Maharashtra proposal also arrives as states move more aggressively to regulate gig work. In Karnataka, platform companies including Swiggy, Zepto, Eternal, Urban Company, Uber and Meesho’s logistics arm Valmo have challenged the Karnataka Platform-Based Gig Workers (Social Security and Welfare) Act, 2025, arguing that it intrudes into a field already covered by the Centre’s social security code. The law establishes a welfare board and fund and, according to reporting by LiveMint and The Times of India, requires platforms to make welfare contributions that the state has set at 1% per transaction, subject to category-based caps. The Karnataka High Court has declined to stop the law, but has granted interim protection from coercive action while the case moves forward.
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