A man from Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday night took to Twitter to state that he had cancelled an order on food aggregator Zomato as he was assigned a non-Hindu delivery executive.
Using the handle @NaMo_SARKAAR, the man, with the user name Pandit Amit Shukla, at 8.26 p.m. wrote: “Just cancelled an order on Zomato they allocated a non hindu rider for my food they said they can't change rider and can't refund on cancellation I said you can't force me to take a delivery I don't want don't refund just cancel.”
Stating that he would take up the issue with his lawyer, he shared screenshots of his chat with the customer care of Zomato. He complained that he didn’t want his order to be delivered by “a Muslim man.”
Zomato’s handle responded: “Food doesn’t have a religion. It is a religion.”
Zomato Founder Deepinder Goyal seconded the response and tweeted with a Tricolour emoji at the end of the message:“We are proud of the idea of India - and the diversity of our esteemed customers and partners. We aren’t sorry to lose any business that comes in the way of our values.”
Retweeting Mr. Goyal’s message, former Election Commissioner of India S.Y. Quraishi said, “Salute Deepinder Goyal! You are the real face of India! Proud of you.”
Former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah retweeted the message saying, “Respect. I love your app. Thank you for giving me a reason to admire the company behind it.”
Harsh Goenka, Chairman, RPG Enterprises, tweeted: If you ask me who I am, I will say I am an Indian, a son, a father, a businessman, a Hindu...my being Hindu is only one aspect of my identity. Yet world over, identity is being defined by narrow confines of religion at cost of all other identities.”
Journalist Barkha Dutt and actors Swara Bhaskar and Rahul Dev retweeted the message as well, praising Mr. Goyal’s response.
