Amid a widespread online debate his online food delivery platform Zomato sparked by launching its 'Pure Veg Mode' and 'Pure Veg Fleet' for customers after considering a few rationale, the company's co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal on Tuesday rolled back the on-ground segregation of green and red dress codes for the riders and stated that both the regular fleet and the pure-vegetarian fleet would be sticking to the red dress code only.
Earlier, in a bid to contain the online debate, Goyal issued a statement assuring that the company would roll back the scheme if "significant negative social repercussions of this change" continue to emerge.
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The 'Pure Veg Mode' on the Zomato mobile application includes a curation of restaurants that categorically stick to serving pure vegetarian food only, and automatically will exclude all restaurants which serve any non-veg food items.
What did Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal say?
Delineating the rationale behind the 'Pure Veg Fleet' service, Goyal wrote, "Despite everyone's best efforts, sometimes the food spills into the delivery boxes. In those cases, the smell of the previous order travels to the next order, and may lead to the next order smelling of the previous order. For this reason, we had to separate the fleet for veg orders."
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In his post on X (Formerly Twitter), the Zomato CEO also asserted that the "participation in our Veg delivery fleet will not discriminate on the basis of our delivery partner’s dietary preferences."
"And I promise, that if we see any significant negative social repercussions of this change, we will roll it back in a heartbeat," Goyal stated.
Alongside the clarification, Goyal also highlighted the "overwhelmingly positive response" he received from a large number of people, especially from "young people who eat non-veg food saying 'now my parents can also use Zomato'.
Zomato Pure Veg Mode: About The Debate
The online debate erupted on Tuesday when Goyal rolled out the “Pure Veg Mode" along with a “Pure Veg Fleet” on Zomato to cater to the customers who have a 100 percent vegetarian dietary preference and are always concerned about how the food was prepared.
From a section of netizens using the narrative of Zomato promoting blatant casteism involving the difference over veg and non-veg dietary preferences to another section backing the idea with the benefits to be received by the vegetarian people, the internet on Tuesday witnessed huge battle unfold.
