A quote of Zomato's Founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal is going viral on social media after a controversial tweet by a Hindu man refusing to accept food delivered by a Muslim delivery boy.

The quote reads, "Our business will keep on running even without Hindus".

Sharing the quote, a section of people are urging to boycott Zomato. A tweet by Riniti Chatterjee has got more than 1800 retweets and 4200 likes.

Another variation of the quote reads, "We don't want business from Hindu customers who don't want to take delivery from Muslim delivery boys. For us, our food business is greater than a religion". (roughly translated from Hindi). You can see all such tweets here.

The message is being widely circulated on Whatsapp and Facebook as well.

What is the controversy?

It all started when a Twitter user tweeted to Zomato recently saying, "Just cancelled an 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 a delivery I don't want don't refund just cancel."

The profile no longer exists on Twitter. However, you can see the archived version of the tweet here.

After he tweeted this to Zomato, they replied to him saying, "Food doesn’t have a religion. It is a religion."

Zomato's founder Deepinder Goyal had quote-tweeted Zomato’s tweet with a message, ‘We are proud of the idea of India – and the diversity of our esteemed customers and partners. We aren’t sorry to lose any business that comes in the way of our values.’

It is clear from his tweet that he is not talking about any religion but the values that his company stands for. We checked the tweets of Mr. Goyal and Zomato but couldn't find any mention about religion.

Conclusion: The viral quote of Zomato's founder "Our business will keep on running even without Hindus" is fake. 

Following the controversy, many people disagreed to Zomato by pointing out that they also serve Halal meat. To this, Zomato issued a clarification on Halal meat. They wrote that just like Halal, they have tags for Jain Food, Vegan Food, and Navratra Thalis, etc.

These tags help customers in making an informed decision while choosing their food. You can read the full statement here: