Online food delivery platform Zomato’s chief executive officer (CEO) Deepinder Goyal, in a social media post, called out a user’s Reddit claim that the company has gone off the rails and said it was embarrassing for him even to issue a clarification on the viral post.
“It is embarrassing to even clarify this – but doing it since many people reached out to me with concern,” said Goyal in his post on X.
Goyal called the social media allegations “utter nonsense” and reiterated that the company is not losing market share and does not force its employees to order only through Zomato.
“Neither are we losing market share, nor will we ever force our employees to order on Zomato. Freedom of choice is something we stand for vehemently,” said Deepinder Goyal in his post.
Zomato’s ‘off the rails’ claims
According to a Reddit post on Friday, April 25, a social media user shared concerns about the food delivery platform and claimed that it has gone off the rails and is currently losing market share to competitors such as Swiggy and Zepto Cafe.
“Things at Zomato seems to be going off the rails. In a recent internal huddle, leadership admitted we’re losing a good chunk of the market share to Zepto Cafe and Swiggy,” said the user on the r/StartUpIndia subreddit.
The post also claimed that the employees are in panic and unhappy with the rules, such as ordering at least seven times a month and being ‘outright banned’ from using other competition apps.
“The culture has become laughably inconsistent. On Monday, Rakesh Ranjan, the CEO of Zomato’s food delivery business is on Slack doing a townhall, telling everyone to ‘stay focused’ and ‘get back on track.’ By Wednesday, he’s removed from the role. You seriously can’t make this stuff up. No clear direction, just a game of musical chairs in leadership and everyone’s shitting their pants not knowing what will happen next,” according to the r/StartUpIndia post.
Zomato crisis claims
The social media users also claimed that the employees are subject to toxicity in the office, and the company is only gaining from the high platform fees.
“Toxicity is baked in. Office politics as per, micromanagement, and public degradation of employees for the bare minimum are becoming the norm. The only thing keeping the company profitable now is platform fees unbelievably. Internally, no one seems to care about long-term sustainability, just numbers,” according to the social media post.
The post also highlighted how delivery partners are underpaid and overworked compared to competitors. It claimed that this is why many delivery riders quit Zomato and join other platforms.
“So many frauds have increased where they pick up the parcel, mark it as picked up and then disappear with it and then no one knows where the parcel is or who even did the fraud. This leads to constant delivery outages. Orders go offline not because restaurants are closed, but because there’s literally no one available to pick them up. And who gets blamed? Everyone except the people responsible for fixing this broken model,” they said in the social media post.
The restaurant partners are also allegedly forced to spend more on advertisements, and most of them are kept in the dark without access to basic customer support, as per the post.
“Customers are frustrated. Riders are frustrated. Restaurant partners are frustrated. It’s a vicious cycle. Zomato might still look shiny from the outside but inside, it’s falling apart,” according to the post.
