Twinkle Khanna aka Mrs Funnybones has shared her take on Zomato’s recent announcement about its plan to launch a separate ‘pure veg’ delivery fleet with green uniforms that allows customers to pick from curated list of restaurants that serve only vegetarian food, and excludes eateries that serve any meat or fish.
In her new column for The Times of India, the actor-turned-author said Zomato probably saw ‘an unfulfilled need’ and wanted to ‘make a profit’.
‘On the surface, it seemed like a solution’
However, Twinkle Khanna said that Zomato forgot that ‘pure-veg’, unlike vegetarian or vegan, ‘has connotations of caste, hierarchy, and untouchability’. She wrote, “The folks at Zomato, they did what successful entrepreneurs are meant to do – see an unfulfilled need, service it and make a profit. It’s another matter that segregating food into pure and impure, and having a fleet of delivery persons that they proposed to dress in green made a large section of Indians see red.”
She further wrote, “On the surface, it seemed like a solution crafted for people with specific dietary requirements, but underneath that layer, they forgot that ‘pure veg’, unlike vegetarian or vegan, has connotations of caste, hierarchy, and untouchability. Communication is a serrated tool; it can be a healing scalpel or a dagger depending on how you use it, and that still doesn’t take into account how good your aim is.”
‘Words are powerful creatures’
Twinkle also wrote that words, ‘not just in hymns and love songs, but even typed on a public forum’ can affect us unexpectedly, like the folks at Zomato ‘now realise’ with their usage of the term ‘pure veg’. She said the expression is ‘capable of stirring up deep emotions’. Twinkle further said that words are ‘powerful creatures’. She called them ‘conduits’ and ‘sanctuaries’, adding that if picked wisely, ‘they make bridges strung over both loss and joy’.
Controversy over Zomato’s ‘pure veg’ fleet
In March, Zomato stirred up controversy after the food delivery platform announced the launch of its green-branded ‘pure veg’ fleet. As the company faced backlash on social media, it said that it would roll back the ‘green branding’ for its new ‘pure veg’ fleet and renamed the service as ‘veg only’. Zomato also dropped the plan to have delivery personnel dress up in green, instead of the regular red uniforms, to ferry the vegetarian food.
Twinkle Khanna’s books
In 2022, Twinkle Khanna went onto pursue her Masters in Fiction Writing at the Goldsmiths, University of London; she completed her degree recently. In 2015, Twinkle had released her first non-fiction book, Mrs Funnybones.
Her second book was The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, a collection of short stories. Twinkle’s third book, Pyjamas Are Forgiving, made her the highest-selling female author in India for 2018, according to Nielsen BookScan India. Her fourth book, Welcome to Paradise, was released in 2023.
