A video of a Zomato’s delivery boy eating food from the boxed orders meant for delivery to users has gone viral on social media. The video has caught the popular food ordering and restaurant discovery platform amid controversy of food tampering. Zomato, however, called it an ‘unusual and rare case’.
“If this video is authentic, given our multiple communication channels with users, who expect the highest standards from Zomato and highlight the smallest deviations and anomalies to us as soon as they receive their orders, this is an unusual and rare case,” Zomato said in a statement.
The delivery boy wearing Zomato t-shirt is seen replacing each box after resealing them, back into the delivery bag. The company claims the video to be from Madurai, Tamil Nadu.
“We have found that the video was shot in Madurai; the person in the video is a delivery partner on our fleet. While we understand that this was a human error in judgement, have taken him off the platform,” Zomato said in a statement.
Amid allegations, Zomato announced that it will soon introduce tamper-proof tapes and educate its delivery fleet of over 1.5 lakh partners to highlight or escalate any such deviations to the company.
Zomato is currently engaged around multiple developments including hiring and exit of top management, exploring food delivery via drones, foray into events business etc. The company has $653.8M in funding over 11 rounds so far. Its latest funding was of $210 million from Ant Financial – an affiliate company of the Chinese Alibaba Group.
Zomato is fighting an intense battle with Bengaluru-based Swiggy to lead the highly competitive food delivery market in India. Ola-backed Foodpanda, Uber Eats etc., are other leading players in the market.
