Swiggy gives Twitterati much to chew on

Food delivery app Swiggy was caught in a crossfire between activists on both sides of the political spectrum on Twitter, for its response on Monday to a satirical post concerning the ongoing protests by farmers. As a result, Swiggy was trending on Twitter on Monday evening.

Earlier in the day, a tweet by a parody account of finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman portrayed an argument it had purportedly had with a “Bhakt” friend over farmer protests.

“We are not dependent on farmers for food. We can always order food from Swiggy. He won,” the “Bhakt” had said – the anonymous account on the micro blogging platform tweeted.


To this, Swiggy’s official Twitter handle responded, “Sorry, we can't refund education,” indicating that individuals who believe that food is independent of the contribution of farmers, are not educated.


Swiggy’s comment received more than 3,500 retweets, while the original post itself had been retweeted about 500 times till late on Monday.

The response evoked praise, memes as well as threats of boycott for its apparent mockery of ‘Bhakts’ – an umbrella, derogatory term in Hindi meaning ‘devotees’, typically used by some to refer to right-wing activists.

Others said companies in general should stay away from making comments on social media that could be construed as favouring one political ideology over another.

An insider at the company told ET that the tweet was not indicative of its political affiliation, and any reference or deductions made in that regard were not in the spirit or intent of the response. Swiggy did not officially respond to ET’s email seeking comment.

Earlier this month, rival Zomato earned the ire of social media users after it took note of actor Swara Bhasker's demand to stop advertising on a Hindi news channel allegedly for its biased coverage.

In a tweet on November 18, Bhasker said she was a regular customer of Zomato’s but stated that she was not comfortable with her money "even indirectly funding this kind of communal bigoted hate.”

To this, Zomato responded, "Hi Swara, please note, we don’t endorse any content except our own. That being said, we are looking into this."