Kuldeep has been riding since 11 in the morning. It is now past 10 at night, and he is still waiting —phone face-up on the dashboard, for his 24th order of the day.
A month ago, he would have hit that number by mid-afternoon. He would have gone home to his wife and children with Rs 1,500 in his pocket, maybe Rs 2,000 on a good day, after accounting for fuel. On Saturday, after more than 11 hours on the road, he made Rs 1,200. Over Rs 400 went into petrol. He took home Rs 800.
"More time outside means more petrol," Kuldeep, who works as a delivery partner for Swiggy in New Delhi, tells this reporter. "I can't keep working round the clock."
Somewhere around the 23rd delivery, if he can get there, the first incentive of Rs 307 kicks in. From there, the ladder climbs steeply: Rs 410 for 26 orders, Rs 505 for 31, Rs 605 for 36. For most delivery workers, these bonuses are the difference between a day that makes sense financially and one that doesn't. "Those higher ones are almost impossible to reach now," he says. "Before this, I could do 30 to 35 in a day."
The reason Kuldeep can't find orders is deceptively simple: Restaurants are running out of gas.
Over the past two weeks, a shortage of commercial LPG cylinders has swept through Delhi NCR, forcing restaurants to reduce their menus, shorten their cooking hours, or shut their kitchens entirely. The immediate cause is a geopolitical rupture thousands of kilometres away.
The Iran-US war, which began on February 28, 2026, disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, through which a large share of India's cooking gas travels. More than 90 per cent of India's roughly 20.5 million metric tonnes of LPG imports in 2024 came from West Asian suppliers, with most shipments routed through the Strait of Hormuz. Maritime insurers have either withdrawn or sharply raised war-risk coverage for vessels operating in the Gulf, with premiums surging in some cases by more than 1,000 per cent.
India imports nearly 60 per cent of its LPG requirement, and historically about 90 per cent of these imports travel through the Hormuz corridor, making the country highly vulnerable to disruptions in that region. When the shipments slowed, the government invoked the Essential Commodities Act of 1955 and redirected domestic refinery output to prioritise household consumers effectively cutting commercial kitchens off from their primary fuel source.
The National Restaurant Association of India’s Vice President Zorawar Kalra told Decode that many of its members are on the verge of closure due to LPG supply “dwindling and depleting rapidly”.
Commercial LPG, he said, is the lifeline of restaurants and cloud kitchens across the country, and any disruption immediately affects their ability to serve customers. Kalra noted that the restaurant sector represents a Rs 6.6 lakh crore ecosystem and is among the country’s largest employment generators.
In Bengaluru, hotel associations reported that only 10 per cent of establishments received their gas supplies by March 10. In Mumbai, commercial LPG refill delays ranged from two to eight days.
The shortage has also reached the black market. Gagandeep Singh Sapra, who runs Tadka Rani, a North Indian restaurant in Delhi, said he had no option but to stop operations last Wednesday after his supply ran out.
Dealers, he said, have been quoting as much as Rs 9,000 for a single cylinder—compared to the official price of Rs 1,768.50 for a 19 kg commercial cylinder from Indian Oil. "The main question is who is hoarding and why there is not enough action against them," he says.
When Sapra posted on social media that his restaurant had gone offline from delivery platforms, he included a detail that cuts through the abstraction of geopolitics: he had selected the option marked "Closed due to LPG shortage."
"It is hurting me," he wrote, "to close kitchens from service."
For the men on bikes waiting outside those kitchens, the hurt is measured in rupees per kilometre.
Suresh (whose name has been changed to protect his privacy), a delivery executive with Zomato, said order alerts have dropped from six or seven an hour to two or three. "Earlier I could choose which one to accept," he says. "Now I just take whatever comes."
Part-time Swiggy rider Kavi (name changed), who works mornings, says many restaurants are now opening only in the evenings, and many run out of food earlier than usual. "I barely see any orders now," he said. "The expenses and the physical labour just don't add up."
This is a crisis landing on workers who were already at the edge.
India's food delivery sector has grown explosively in recent years, built on a workforce the platforms do not classify as employees. According to NITI Aayog, the gig and platform economy was employing close to 7.7 million workers in 2024, with numbers expected to rise to around 24 million by 2030. The pitch to workers—and to investors—is flexibility. The reality for most is unsafe roads, unfair pay and algorithmic penalties.
The 2024 NITI Aayog report found that 90 per cent of gig workers lack savings and face high vulnerability to emergencies. There is no paid leave, no employer-funded health insurance, no provident fund. Platform companies term these workers "delivery partners," a designation that changes the employer-employee relationship and allows companies to avoid liabilities and reduce costs.
The incentive structures the workers describe—tiered bonuses requiring 23, 26, 31 deliveries in a single day—are designed to push them toward longer hours while the platforms retain the ability to alter or withdraw the targets at any time.
Now, with kitchens going dark, even the gruelling arithmetic of a normal day no longer works.
“Gas now costs more than I earn”
The crisis is reaching delivery workers not only through their phones but through their own kitchen stoves.
Alam (name changed), a Zomato delivery executive who supports a family of six and is originally from Bihar, said that local LPG refill shops near his home have either shut or started charging dramatically higher rates. Prices that were around Rs 100 per kilogram have shot up to over Rs 500 in some places. "That's almost what I earn nowadays after more than 10 hours of labour," he said.
"Only a week ago I was hardly paying attention to the war," he says. "I thought it was far away. Now it feels like it's affecting people like us too."
Kuldeep, too, knows there's a war, though the details are hazy. "There's a war or something happening in Iran," he said uncertainly. The Strait of Hormuz is not a phrase he has heard before but the closure has rearranged the economics of his day completely.
The Gig Workers Association has urged Swiggy and Zomato to pause penalties and protect workers' ratings and earnings during the disruption. Neither company has made a public statement specifically addressing the impact of the LPG crisis on delivery workers.
Decode has reached out to Swiggy and Zomato for comment. The story will be updated when they respond.
On the margins of the city, the same story is repeating itself in smaller registers. Arghyadip Datta, who owns Pet Puraan restaurant in Chittaranjan Park, has started avoiding dishes that need heavy gas use. "If things don't smoothen out," he says, "it will be difficult to stretch beyond a few weeks."
Even Indian Railways has reportedly advised caterers to explore alternative fuels. Small bakeries have warned of possible bread shortages if the crisis continues.
The restaurants that run on piped natural gas—a network that exists in select urban pockets— have been relatively insulated. Girija Shankar, who owns Depot 48 in Delhi's Greater Kailash 2, says his kitchen is still running. But even he has received an advisory from supplier Indraprastha Gas Limited asking restaurants to cap consumption at 80 per cent of their six-month average. "We are monitoring our usage closely and trying to remain mindful," he says.
For most of the country, that option doesn't exist. Piped networks are urban, partial and still expanding—in Kolkata, pipeline supply reaches only select pockets of the metropolitan region and nearby towns like Kalyani. Beyond those corridors, commercial kitchens run on cylinders, and cylinders have stopped coming.
At Arsalan, one of Kolkata's most recognised biryani restaurants, the Park Circus outlet has resorted to something its kitchen hadn't done in years. "We have recently shifted from LPG to using wood for cooking due to the crisis," the restaurant's manager said. "Our main item, biryani, is now being prepared entirely on wood."
It is, in its way, a remarkable image—a restaurant famous across the city, reverting to a method from a previous century because a war in the Persian Gulf has made modern fuel unavailable.
The sweetmeat shops of Kolkata, as integral to the city's identity as its trams, are feeling it too. At the Girish Ch. Dey & Nakur Ch. Nandy confectionery, owner Partha Nandy says they are now receiving only a fraction of their usual commercial LPG supply, with priority going to emergency services. "The gas crisis has forced us to scale down the preparation of hard-set sweets," he says.
Hard-set sweets—the kind that require sustained, precise heat—are among the most technically demanding confections in Bengali cuisine. These include sweets like, Kara Paak Sandesh, Jolbhora, Chandrapuli and Manohara. You cannot make them on reduced flame and call it the same thing.
The government said on Monday that India has adequate crude oil and LPG supplies, and that no dry-out has been reported anywhere. It confirmed that two LPG tankers have crossed the Strait of Hormuz and are expected to dock, offering some indication that supplies may ease. But on the ground, the relief has not yet arrived. Restaurants remain closed. Order alerts remain sparse.
Additional reporting by Srijit Das.
