A free lunch

On December 12th, social media voyeurs took a well-earned rest from speculating on weighty issues such as the cost of the Ambani wedding invitation, "I'm telling you it was Dolce & Gabbana, yaar, minimum 3 lacs, my friend Gunjan showed it to me," to sit in judgment on the hapless Zomato delivery guy who was caught on camera eating from his, er, deliverables.

Food may be in short supply in this country but opinions never are, and the incident set off a slugfest when the video went viral. A good litmus test to evaluate someone's EQ (empathy quotient) would be to ask them whether they sided with the famished employee or with the CEO who fired him.

 "We would like to iterate that given our multiple communication channels

with users who expect the highest standards from Zomato and highlight the smallest of deviations to us as soon as they receive their orders, this is highly unusual and a rare case," said the company spokesman. Crikey, does this mean that if communication were restricted to one channel, it would be ok to take a bite from the apple? Given that the incident took place in Madurai, famed for the quality of its Muniyandi Vilas mutton biryani, would eating only the rice while leaving the mutton intact qualify as the smallest deviation? Just asking. 

As per their CEO Deepinder Goyal's recent boast, Zomato is apparently the market leader in food delivery: "At the beginning of 2018, we were at 3.5 million orders a month. With 21 million orders per month, as far as we know, we are now the market leader in the food ordering space in India," he claimed. Call me pernickety, but I have to say some CEO's make politicians look good in comparison, especially in damage-control mode after a scandal.

On receiving confirmation that the offender was part of their delivery fleet and that it wasn't fake news posted by a competitor, Zomato sacked the delivery boy. Unfortunately the social media debate between bleeding hearts and trolls generated far more heat than light; why are we so pathetically devoid of nuance?

 Ambarish Diwedi tweeted, "Problem is not with rider but the way Zomato treats employees. They don't treat them like humans, they don't give enough space and time to have food. Organization's culture needs to be improved", with Kapil Shah going so far as to denounce them as, "money-minded zombies."

"Yes, he did a wrong thing but aren't you guys ashamed that a person engaged in food delivery was so hungry that he couldn't resist eating his order? Zomato has ruined his life," he added.

Others like Puneet Khanduri were distinctly unsympathetic, "So a delivery boy gets fired for being caught on camera eating some of the food he was meant to deliver and a bunch of folks jump to his defense saying he must have been hungry. Unless you are willing to eat the food he ate and delivered, please keep your sympathy to yourself." Oh dear, Puneet clearly wasn't a boy scout or a happy camper willing to share his last biscuit.

Incidentally, anyone who is so squeamish about food hygiene needs to spend some time in a hotel kitchen, preferably in Madurai. Pity delivery boys don't have the time or energy to tweet: we might see an entirely different perspective.

On a more serious note, there have been 11 mergers in the food-delivery space since 2017, with the most recent being Swiggy's acquisition of Scootsy for 50 cr and Zomato picking up the unfortunately named, "TongueStun", for $18 million . However analysts warn that merely delivering food to customer is not a sustainable business model. The margins are paper-thin, while the investment in uniforms and insulated bags is substantial and then of course, there's the revenue sharing with the restaurant. 

Over 20 cr Indians go to bed hungry every day and if you found this statistic depressing, the annual death toll due to hunger and malnutrition is 10 million. In the circumstances, some compassion and empathy seems appropriate, if not mandatory. In the mad rush to gain scalability, market share and funding, we seem to have lost sight of the basic purpose of life.

Physics Prof Richard Muller of UC, Berkeley, California, once suggested to a student who felt his life was meaningless that he volunteer at a local

kitchen that feeds the poor for just  ne day a week. So the seeker of purpose gave it a try; a few months later Muller spoke to him, and surprise, something had indeed changed. Unfortunately the student had still not found his purpose in life; he just no longer cared about the question.