Facing criticism over the presence of suspicious 'one-dish' restaurants on its platform, India's food delivery giant, Zomato, has issued a response. The company said it had 'delisted' some of the fraudulent restaurants on its app that may have gamed the system to push 'prohibited items'. The emergence of shady listings on Zomato had led to social media users floating several conspiracy theories, with some believing that the restaurants were a front for drug trade while others claimed that Zomato was facilitating 'money laundering' business.
"We have identified all such restaurants that were potentially fraudulent and have delisted them from our platform. To solve this more comprehensively, we have also investigated all other restaurants which have a very limited menu on Zomato and might have listed prohibited items or worked around a way to list prohibited items," a Zomato spokesperson said.
"As per our policy, all restaurants listed on Zomato need to have a FSSAI license and we also actively block items such as alcohol, cigarettes/cigars/vapes from being listed on our platform," they added.
The restaurant aggregator admitted that the said restaurants were able to game Zomato's "checks by using generic food names such as, 'Naughty strawberry' and 'Merry Berry'".
"We have further strengthened our fraud checks to proactively identify such cases to avoid similar incidents in the future," the company said.
What was the controversy?
Last week, social media users pointed out that such shady restaurants had come up in the northern Indian union territory of Chandigarh -- offering a single dish at 'absurdly high prices'. Some of the suspicious restaurants had no reviews while others had been bombarded with negative reviews -- possibly to shield the operation from customers simply looking to order food.
"Came across some odd listings on Zomato in Chandigarh - so-called 'restaurants' that only offer a single dish, priced absurdly high. It's got me wondering: could these be fronts for money laundering or some other shady business?" read the post by a Redditor.
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As the post went viral, the users came up with their theories about what could have led to the emergence of such facilities.
"Those look like flavours of juice that you put into your vapes. Pricing also looks consistent," said one user, while another added: "True. I know of an exact such operation in another city, that essentially sells vape pens/cartridges. The price is almost the same, Rs 1000- Rs 1200 per item."
One user pointed out that all the restaurants were in the same location 'Nayagaon', adding to the mystery.
