Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal responds to criticism of food delivery platform’s new ‘Veg mode enablement fee’

New “Veg mode enablement fee” in Zomato has sparked outrage online, with users calling it a “luxury tax” for vegetarians

Hyderabad: Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal has responded to criticism over the food delivery platform’s new “Veg mode enablement fee” by apologising and repealing the fee.

A tax imposed on vegetarian food deliveries has sparked outrage online, with users calling it a “luxury tax” for vegetarians. In a recent post on #Linkedin India’s user #rohitranjan shared his bill screenshot and showed additional costs for vegetarian foods.

Ranjan explained a new accusation of vegetarian cuisine and changed what was once a simple and healthy choice in a high-class subscription plan.

Ranjan was thankful to Zomato’s competitor Swiggy for treating all food options equally, in contrast to Zomato‘s decision to impose a tax on vegetarian deliveries. He sarcastically wrote, “Thank you Zomato for proving once again that being vegetarian is a luxury tax!”, the post was tagged with the hashtags #Herbivores, #LuxuryTax and #VegetarianTax.

Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal was quick to respond to the backlash. In response to Ranjan’s message, Goyal acknowledged the mistake and promised to correct it immediately. He said, “This is stupid on our part. I am super sorry for this. This charge will be removed today itself. I will also fix what’s needed to fix in the team so that such s**t doesn’t happen again.”.

Ranjan expressed his gratitude for Goyal’s response and thanked the CEO for stepping in and quickly resolving the issue. “Thank you again for saving us! What has really surprised me about this journey is how successfully we were able to take this idea from concept to execution and get buy-in from senior stakeholders,” Ranjan wrote.