Shares of online food delivery platform Zomato advanced 4.35 points, or 2.63 percent on Thursday (March 21) to trade at 169.90 a piece on NSE as investors reacted positively to the company. This comes as some brokerage firms have maintained a ‘buy’ rating on Deepinder Goyal-led company.
UBS has maintained a ‘buy’ rating on Zomato with a target of ₹195 per share as it expects the company’s year-on-year growth to remain healthy.
Zomato recently scrapped its plans to launch a ‘pure veg fleet’ for its upcoming ‘pure veg mode’ that aims to cater to the needs of Indian vegetarian customers.
“We now realize that even some of our customers could get into trouble with their landlords, and that would not be a nice thing if that happened because of us,” said CEO and co-founder Deepinder Goyal. He had earlier claimed that “overwhelmingly positive” response to the plan for a segregated delivery fleet.
President of the Indian Federation of App-Based Transport Workers (IFAT), Sheikh Salahuddin, said: “The last time someone on Zomato requested for a delivery partner of a particular religion, Goyal said ‘food has no religion’. Today, he seems to have gone back on this. Is he now going to categorize delivery partners on the lines of caste, community, and religion?.”
The food aggregator is not new to controversies. Zomato, last year, had apologized for an advertisement that showed a Dalit character from the film Lagaan being “recycled” and used as an inanimate objects. The advertisement also led the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) to issue a notice.
The article originally appeared on Indian Express.