Mumbai Police schools Zomato top boss for snitching on Swiggy

Food delivery unicorn Zomato in 2021 has found innovative ways to make its way into slow news cycle periods -- whether through a quarrel between customers and delivery executives, or a renaming to file a draft red herring prospectus ahead of an IPO, or even snitching on a rival. 

You read that right. 

Maharashtra entered a fresh curfew on Wednesday, with only essential services allowed to function, to curb the second-wave of the coronavirus. 

Read: Essentials only 5% of ecommerce biz, Maharashtra curfew to hit majority of players  

At a time when it’s already hard to keep up with changing lockdown guidelines, across different states of India, Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal on Wednesday used his verified Twitter handle to tag Mumbai Police and call out foodtech rival Swiggy about the latter’s choice to stay open for business post 8 PM. 

Goyal has over a total 465,600 followers on the microblogging platform. 

“Zomato is prepared to provide the essential food delivery service post 8 PM in Mumbai, but we are not doing so because we are abiding by the letter of the law. I see our competition is continuing to operate post 8 PM. I urge @MumbaiPolice to please clarify the way forward here,” he tweeted at 9:03 PM. 

Zomato is prepared to provide the essential food delivery service post 8pm in Mumbai, but we are not doing so because we are abiding by the letter of the law.

I see our competition is continuing to operate post 8pm. I urge @MumbaiPolice to please clarify the way forward here. pic.twitter.com/LFd9qZUmED

— Deepinder Goyal (@deepigoyal) April 14, 2021

Even as the gentleman did not name Swiggy, he attached the screenshot of the homepage of Swiggy app.  

And voila, Twitterati broke loose!  

At 11:02 PM, Mumbai Police’s official handle strolled by Goyal’s tweet.  

“Kindly read the government notification. It says that home delivery is allowed but there is no time limit specified,” Mumbai Police tweeted back. 

At 10:20 PM, however, Goyal realised the error of judgment and tweeted his love to Bengaluru based Swiggy with a red-heart emoji. Classic Sorry I love you but had to do it.

Verbatim of course, he said, “Thank you. Mumbai, we are on tomorrow. We have received the notice at 9:54pm. @swiggy_in - I am sorry, had no other choice. I love you.” 

Zomato and Swiggy did not immediately respond to TechCircle’s request for comment on the matter. 

While TechCircle’s at it, sample a fun tweet. 

@deepigoyal to his legal team. pic.twitter.com/IgvXjVFdyR

— Internetjeevi (@internetjeevi) April 14, 2021

Gurugram based Zomato is en route to an IPO this year, which will make it the first foodtech startup from India to go public. The company is backed by investors such as Tiger Global Management, Info Edge India, and Mirae Asset Capital, which is a shared investor with Swiggy.