Award case: Evaluating Zomato's Marketing Strategy

The brief

Food delivery is one thing; delivering the right message is another. Zomato’s
marketing team learnt it the hard way when all it wanted to do was help India’s
vegetarians a bit more. Sometime around mid-March 2024, popular food delivery
company Zomato announced that it was launching a "pure vegetarian mode" on its
application for customers with 100 per cent vegetarian dietary preference. "India has
the largest percentage of vegetarians in the world, and one of the most important
feedback we've gotten from them is that they are very particular about how their
food is cooked, and how their food is handled…," CEO Deepinder Goyal said in a post
on 'X' (formerly Twitter).

How would have Zomato's 'pure veg mode' feature worked? According to Goyal, the
new feature would have allowed users to choose from a list of restaurants that
exclusively served vegetarian food. "Pure Veg Mode will exclude all restaurants
which serve any non-veg food item," he said.

Colours red and green

With the delivery boys donning red for non-veg food delivery and colour green for
veg delivery, the new feature would have acted as a filter even to exclude any veg
meal served by a non-veg restaurant. "This means a non-veg meal, or even a veg
meal served by a non-veg restaurant will never go inside the green delivery box
meant for our pure veg fleet," he added.

But there was a huge backlash. Within weeks of the launch, Zomato rolled back the
green uniforms for riders delivering ‘pure vegetarian’ food after the contentious
scheme sparked backlash online. The scheme was criticised by many who said it
could reinforce caste norms.

Others raised concerns about the possibility of Zomato's regular fleet facing
restrictions from certain societies and RWAs.

“While we are going to continue to have a fleet for vegetarians, we have decided to
remove the on-ground segregation of this fleet on the ground using the colour green.
All our riders — both our regular fleet and our fleet for vegetarians, will wear the
colour red,” Zomato chief executive officer Deepinder Goyal said in a post on social
media platform X.
Goyal added that the change would mean that the fleet meant for vegetarian orders
would not be identifiable on the ground. It will, however, show on the Zomato app
that vegetarian orders will be served by the ‘veg only’ fleet.

“This will ensure that our red uniform delivery partners are not incorrectly associated
with non-veg food, and blocked by RWAs or societies during special days,” he wrote.
Shaik Salauddin, founder and president, Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union,
in a note, said: “Our question to Deepinder ji on Zomato's ‘Pure Veg Fleet’
announcement: Will Zomato now also filter out delivery workers who are vegetarian
only to service this fleet? Will in the future also take customer feedback about who
can deliver their food and who cannot?”

“Our riders’ physical safety is of paramount importance to us. We now realise that
even some of our customers could get into trouble with their landlords, and that
would not be a nice thing if that happened because of us,” Goyal said.

Responding to the backlash, he clarified that the pure veg fleet “doesn’t serve or
alienate any religious, or political preference.”

According to Goyal, the new green fleet was introduced “because despite everyone's
best efforts, sometimes the food spills into the delivery boxes. In those cases, the
smell of the previous order travels to the next order, and may lead to the next order
smelling of the previous order.”

Meanwhile, Swiggy clarified that a purported advertisement taking an apparent dig

at Zomato's ‘pure veg fleet’ circulating on social media bearing its name was fake.

END

Questions

1. File an abstract of at least 250 words, but not more than 400 words, clearly
describing 2 parts:
a. what strategy Zomato’s marketing team should have ideally followed to
implement the on-ground veg & non-veg segregation
b. how they should have pre-empted communication crisis and put in
place the right strategy for that beforehand
2. Upload a PDF version of a presentation deck, with not more than 10 slides,
including the one on the above abstract, for the following points:
a. Abstract
b. From similar marketing strategy and communication crises that brands
(Indian or international) faced before, what common themes or best
practices can you derive?
c. Critically examine the effectiveness of Zomato's communication
strategy in addressing stakeholder concerns and restoring customer
confidence.
d. Assess the role of social media and public discourse in shaping
Zomato's decision-making process and crisis management approach.
e. As the head of Swiggy, Zomato’s competition, capturing your market
reaction and move in communicating your brand strategy.