 "Zomato rolls back green colour from veg fleet, all riders to wear red")
Food delivery major Zomato on Wednesday rolled back the green uniforms for riders delivering ‘pure vegetarian’ food after the contentious scheme sparked backlash online.
The scheme was criticised by many who said it could reinforce caste norms.
Others raised concerns about the possibility of Zomato's regular fleet facing restrictions from certain societies and RWAs.
“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,” Zomato chief executive officer Deepinder Goyal said in a post on social media platform X.
Goyal added that the change would mean that the fleet meant for vegetarian orders would not be identifiable on the ground. It will, however, show on the Zomato app that vegetarian orders will be served by the ‘veg only’ fleet.
“This will ensure that our red uniform delivery partners are not incorrectly associated with non-veg food, and blocked by RWAs or societies during special days,” he wrote.
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Goyal on Tuesday announced the launch of ‘Pure Veg Mode’ along with a ‘Pure Veg Fleet’ for customers who have 100 per cent vegetarian preference.
The offering consists of a curation of restaurants that serve only pure vegetarian food, excluding all restaurants that serve non-vegetarian items.
Shaik Salauddin, founder and president, Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union, in a note, said: “Our question to Deepinder ji on Zomato's ‘Pure Veg Fleet’ announcement: Will Zomato now also filter out delivery workers who are vegetarian only to service this fleet? Will in the future also take customer feedback about who can deliver their food and who cannot?”
“Our riders’ physical safety is of paramount importance to us. We now realise that even some of our customers could get into trouble with their landlords, and that would not be a nice thing if that happened because of us,” Goyal said.
Responding to the backlash, he clarified that the pure veg fleet “doesn’t serve or alienate any religious, or political preference.”
According to Goyal, the new green fleet was introduced “because 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.”
Meanwhile, Swiggy has clarified that a purported advertisement taking an apparent dig at Zomato's ‘pure veg fleet’ circulating on social media bearing its name was fake.