Zomato App gets 1-star ratings as backlash for ‘being biased against Hindus’

Food aggregator Zomato’s response after a customer cancelled his order over the delivery executive’s religion took the internet by storm Wednesday. But hours after winning hearts on social media, many people seem to have gone after the company, giving it poor ratings.

On Tuesday night, Amit Shukla, a customer from Jabalpur, had tweeted that he had cancelled an order placed on Zomato since a ‘non-Hindu’ rider was allocated to deliver his food.

“Just cancelled order on @ZomatoIN they allocated a non-hindu rider for my food they said they can’t change rider and can’t refund on cancellation I said you can’t force me to take delivery I don’t want don’t refund just cancel,” Shukla tweeted.

Since the incident, Shukla seems to have deactivated his Twitter account. But his supporters have ganged up against Zomato, advising people to go to Google Playstore and give the company’s app 1-star ratings for being “biased against Hindus”.

Out of 2,017 latest reviews about Zomato that ThePrint has checked, 1,569 gave it 1-star ratings while only 448 gave 5-stars nearly 77 per cent.

Reviewers have claimed that “this will teach Zomato a lesson” to not “mess with the Hindus”. A few also said they are with “Shukla Ji”. Around 228 latest reviews (roughly 11 per cent) contained the word “Hindu”.

Not only these but tweets with #IstandWithAmit also began emerging. But such coordinated attacks, involving feedback and reviews on social media platforms, is unlikely to affect Zomato’s rating in the long run. The app currently has a rating of 4.3 on the Playstore with 2.6 million reviews and more than 50 million downloads. There are also many who have also given the company a 5-star rating for being “truly Indian”.