Deepinder Goyal, CEO and founder of the food delivery giant Zomato, launched a new fleet of "pure veg" delivery for their vegetarians customers on Tuesday, 19 March.
Taking to social media, Goyal shared a picture of a Zomato delivery agent who can be seen carrying a green delivery box, that will serve orders from only 'pure veg' restaurants. The founder cited feedback from vegetarian customers as the reason for this launch.
The founder has now written a series of tweets wherein the new fleet will not be identifiable, responding to the feedback he has received.
"Update on our pure veg fleet — While we are going to continue to have a fleet for vegetarians, we have decided to remove the on-ground segregation of this fleet on the ground using the colour green. All our riders — both our regular fleet, and our fleet for vegetarians, will wear the colour red."
The move earlier sparked a debate on the internet with several netizens calling the launch 'discriminatory and exclusionist.' The move continues to invite criticism.
In a series of threads, Goyal wrote on X, "Our dedicated Pure Veg Fleet will only serve orders from these pure veg restaurants. This means that a non-veg meal, or even a veg meal served by a non-veg restaurant will never go inside the green delivery box meant for our Pure Veg Fleet."
Reacting to the announcement, one user wrote, "Why this discrimination? By the way have you checked if those riders are vegetarians. Such a ridiculous issue."
"Someone is turning untouchability into business. Great. How can you make sure the person who delivers that hasn't eaten non-vegetarian before delivery. You would, but you can't find pure vegetarians at this scale for a low paying delivery job, can you?" wrote another.(Photo Courtesy: X/@deepigoyal)
Have a look at some other reactions here:
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