No, Zomato Did Not Hire a Model To Drive Around With an Empty Bag in Indore
Zomato CEO took to his official X handle to clarify that the company has nothing to do with the video.
Fact-Check | The video is being shared with a false claim on the internet.
(Photo: Altered by The Quint)
A video of a woman riding on a motorbike with a bag of food delivery company Zomato is going viral on the internet.
What are users claiming?: Social media users shared the video with a caption that said, "Indore #Zomato marketing head had this idea. He hired a model to drive around with an empty Zomato bag for one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening. @zomato is on a roll (sic)."
An archive of the post can be found here.
The video had recorded more than 2 million views on the platform at the time of writing this report. Archives of similar claims can be found here, here, and here.
What is the truth?: The video is being shared on the internet with a false claim.
Zomato's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Deepinder Goyal took to his official X handle to clarify that the video has nothing to do with the company.
How did we find out?: We divided the video into several keyframes using a Google Chrome extension, InVID, and performed a reverse image search on them.
This led us to the same video posted on an Instagram handle named 'pallavichoudhary27'.
The video was uploaded on 3 October with a caption saying "Public reaction."
On checking the Instagram handle, we found a clarification in the highlights section where the same woman could be heard saying that "she only created the video for content."
Choudhary told The Quint that she had NOT partnered with Zomato for the video, and had made it to promote the concept of "woman food delivery agent."
Zomato's CEO clarifies: Goyal took to his official X handle to clarify that the company had nothing to do with the video.
He added that the company does not endorse helmet-less biking and that they don't have a "Indore Marketing Head."
Goyal further said, "This seems to be someone just “free-riding” on our brand. Having said that, there’s nothing wrong with women delivering food - we have hundreds of women who deliver food everyday to earn a livelihood for their families, and we are proud of their work ethic."
Conclusion: The video is being shared with a false claim stating that Zomato hired a model to drive around with an empty bag in Indore.
(This article has been updated to include Pallavi Choudhary's response.)
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