In a post on X, Goyal said that the food sometimes spills into the delivery boxes and its smell travels to the next order.

“For this reason, we had to separate the fleet for veg orders,” the Zomato CEO said.

Goyal set off a storm on social media on Tuesday with his announcement of a dedicated fleet for the food delivery giant, sparking a contentious debate on X. The fleet is intended to exclusively serve orders from ‘pure veg’ restaurants, with deliveries made in distinctive green boxes.

The announcement garnered mixed reactions from users, with many expressing concerns about the implications of such a decision, including potential harassment of delivery partners in the usual ‘Red’ fleet.

Read: Zomato to open restaurants? CEO Deepinder Goyal’s response

Some users also flagged concerns that certain resident welfare associations (RWAs) may ban the regular fleet from entering apartment complexes.

“It wasn’t enough that our food is considered a sin to eat, us filthy for eating it, and to be discriminated for cooking or ordering it at home. Now we watch as RWAs with their history of great decisions make houses ‘pure veg fleet only’,” a user lamented.

Another user raised practical concerns about the use of different-coloured boxes for veg deliveries, suggesting that it could lead to further discrimination. “If Zomato uses different colored boxes to deliver veg food, bigoted landlords can harass tenants if they see non-green colors. Whatever assurance of veg fleet if needed must be kept inside the app only,” the user cautioned.

Questions were raised about the potential extension of the veg-only policy to delivery personnel. “So how long before they decide the driver of veg food must also be vegetarian?” pondered a user.

The Zomato CEO asserted that participation in the ‘pure veg’ delivery fleet will not discriminate on the basis of the delivery partner’s dietary preferences.

“There’s an opinion that some societies and RWAs will now not let our regular fleet in. We will stay alert for any such cases and work with these RWAs to not let this happen. We understand our social responsibility due to this change, and we will not back down from solving it when the need arises,” Goyal said.

“And I promise, that if we see any significant negative social repercussions of this change, we will roll it back in a heartbeat,” he added.

Goyal also said he has received an “overwhelmingly positive response” on the launch of ‘pure veg’ fleet.

“A lot of comments from young people who eat non-veg food saying “now my parents can also use zomato”,” he wrote.