Zomato drops ‘pure’ from its vegetarian-only feature

Zomato on Thursday said it has dropped the word “pure” from the name of its new mode, which is meant to cater to the dietary preferences of ‘100% vegetarians’. Amid fears that this mode, which will have a “dedicated” delivery fleet, will allow users to select delivery partners of a particular community or dietary preference, the company clarified that there will be no such option. In a post on social media platform X, which came from Zomato’s social media handle, the company said: “Delivery partners onboarded on Zomato will never be discriminated against on the basis of any criteria.” A spokesperson clarified that the “dedicated” fleet of delivery partners will in no way be visually distinguishable from any other delivery partner of the enterprise. Since the first announcement by Mr. Goyal on Tuesday, introducing the “Pure Veg Mode” and the “Pure Veg Fleet” for the app, the company has in the last 48 hours, first reversed the decision to dress its vegetarian-mode fleet in a separate green uniform, and has now gone back on using terminology like “pure”, which activists and academics pointed out was inevitably going to reinforce the already existing deep-seated association between vegetarianism and purity that has been prevalent in India.