Zomato saw a historic surge in food orders on New Year’s Eve 2023 as the food delivery aggregator platform hit its all-time high number of orders received in a day. CEO Deepinder Goyal shared that Zomato delivered almost as many orders on NYE 23 as in the previous six years combined (2015-2020). However, a tweet shared by Deepinder Goyal even before the NYE started earned him rampant trolling and a serious discussion about toxic work culture in India.
On 31 December, Deepinder Goyal took to micro-blogging platform X to share a set of pictures of what was dubbed as the “War Room” or the Zomato office.
This post earned the Zomato CEO the ire of netizens, instead of their encouragement. “Sir, the real FIGHTERS are on the ground. The delivery boys Not the one shown in the picture above” wrote one netizen. Notably, Deepinder Goyal also shared that Zomato delivery partners have been upended. ₹97 lakhs on New Year’s Eve 2023.
On Deepinder Goyal’s “War Room” post, another netizen wrote, “This is not an achievement. This shows that your product is not up to par and you make people work on a weekend. Project planning and execution looks damn bad”.
One netizen joked, “Ordering from Swiggy to make sure you don’t have to work a little harder :)))”.
“By sensationalizing and dramatizing this behavior, you are setting a bad precedent for the rest of the entrepreneurs and senior leaders in India, a country where many tech workers already suffer from health problems due to lack of work-life balance plus. stress,” wrote another user.
“Shameless enough to post a photo of managers chatting to hide the fact that only the ‘delivery partners’ are working non-stop for the new year. And dense enough to call it a ‘war room’ when an actual war (genocide) is happening elsewhere in the world,” X-user wrote while reacting to Deepinder Goyal’s post.
“I believe all these people have family waiting at home to celebrate New Year. Even though I worked yesterday but not until 12 in the morning, how are you going to make sure their family doesn’t miss the party too? It’s very sad to work for someone else’s party when we can’t enjoy,” expressed another user.
Meanwhile, a post about work culture in Europe also went viral. It sparked a discussion about the startup culture in India.
An X-user shared a screenshot of a notification sent by grocery delivery platform Getir informing its users that operations will pause at 7 a.m. on New Year’s Eve.
“Indian hyperlocal startups would set up their war room today. Swiggy, Zomato, Blinkit, etc would be ready to handle the highest demand today. Meanwhile in Europe:,” he wrote while sharing a picture of the notification.
“This is why the work culture of Europe is superior. Indian startups pay peanuts and expect you to sacrifice your life for them. People who placed orders across the country, meanwhile, were generous in giving to the delivery patrons,” user X commented on the post.
“Yes, because they realize their employees have families too,” another X user added.
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