A day after Deepinder Goyal posted a video showing him being denied entry to a Gurgaon mall while delivering food as a delivery agent, the Zomato CEO shared that the mall authorities have responded and assured improvements for delivery workers.
Goyal who was clad in the signature red Zomato delivery t-shirt, along with his wife Grecia Munoz, had taken up the role of a delivery agent for a day to gain firsthand insight into their challenges. In the video, Goyal explained how security guards at Ambience Mall refused him entry and directed him to use the stairs.
He ended up climbing three flights of stairs to reach the Gurgaon restaurant, where he encountered another issue—delivery agents were made to wait on the floor as they were not allowed inside the restaurant.
Sharing his experience, Goyal wrote in the video, “During my second order, I realised that we need to work with malls more closely to improve working conditions for all delivery partners. And malls also need to be more humane to delivery partners.”
The day after Goyal's video went viral on social media, he posted an update stating that the owner of Ambience Mall had contacted Zomato to offer support in improving conditions for delivery agents. Goyal revealed that Ambience Mall has now set up a "comfortable online food delivery pick-up point" for all delivery personnel.
"Thanks Arjun (owner of Ambience) for noticing my post and taking quick action. He’s also agreed to let us employ some “walkers” inside the mall to quickly shuttle the food from the restaurant to these pickup points to hand over the food to delivery partners," he said in a post on X.
"I urge all the other mall owners to please do the same, or come up with other innovative solutions which can help our collective customers, our delivery partners, restaurants, delivery aggregators, as well as malls themselves," the Zomato CEO said.
Reacting to his post, many users said that not just malls but various societies also don't allow delivery partners to take the main lift.
"Every society, every mall and every office should make it mandatory for delivery partners to use normal regular lifts and entrances/exits. There shouldn't be any divide," a user said.