Did Swiggy Take A Dig At Zomato's 'Pure Veg' Fleet? Here's The Truth

Swiggy, a popular food ordering and delivery platform, issued a public service announcement to address a viral poster mocking Zomato’s decision to introduce a ‘veg only’ fleet. The company clarified that the post bearing their name was not created by them or anyone associated with Swiggy.

The notice added, “Kindly refrain from circulating or attributing it to Swiggy.” This “fake ad” in question was made by Nilesh Trivedi, the co-founder and CTO of tech company Snow Mountain AI. Trivedi shared it on X on March 20, and captioned it “New Swiggy ad hits hard. /s” Usually the ‘/s’ denotes that the post is sarcastic but it appears many people took it as a real post by Swiggy.

The poster in question had the logo of Swiggy and it showed a landowner evicting a tenant, as a riot breaks out in the background. The poster said, “Eviction-safe food delivery. In Indian neighbourhoods, your dietary preferences are best kept private. Our delivery fleet doesn’t leak your private habits to the world. You also save some money as we don’t have to pay for the life insurance of our delivery staff against possible mob lynchings.” This post raked in over 8,000 likes.

Within hours of sharing the “fake ad”, Trivedi issued a clarification that his post was “not an authentic ad by Swiggy.” He wrote, “I thought I had dropped sufficient clues: – “/s” – Snarky language – Bad graphic design – AI-generated art – Corporations taking a stand with an apparent spine. But it seems like this was still widely misunderstood. My mistake.”

All these events happened after Zomato announced that they would specially cater to vegetarians who want to eat from pure-veg restaurants with their soon-to-be-launched “pure veg fleet”. The riders that work in this fleet will wear a green uniform instead of Zomato’s regular red one. This prompted a major backlash, primarily for reinforcing dietary caste norms. Critics also pointed out many people could discriminate against Zomato workers in red uniforms or landlords can evict people who order from Zomato’s regular service.

Following the backlash, Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal announced that they have decided to remove the uniform-based segregation of their delivery agents. He thanked people for the criticism that helped them “understand the unintended consequences of this rollout.”