Kolkata: Zomato delivery executives protest over Chinese investment in firm; burn T-shirts

Amidst the ongoing Indo-China crisis, 20 delivery executives of food home delivery application Zomato protested over the firm having investment from China on Saturday in Kolkata. The protesters, who are delivery executives in Kolkata, burnt their Zomato T-shirts, as a mark of protest against the Chinese investment. The protesters even claimed that they had quit the startup as it has investors from China.

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The issue over Chinese investment

In October 2018, Zomato raised $210 million from Alibaba's payment affiliate Ant Financial. Ant Financial received an ownership stake of over 10% of the company as part of the round, which valued Zomato at around $2 billion. Zomato had also raised an additional $150 million also from Ant Financial earlier in 2018. The delivery executives had an issue over a Chinese investment making massive returns from an Indian organization, at a time when Indian Army lost 21 of its heroes in the ongoing border crisis with China.

Since, the crisis which martyred 21 Indian soldiers at Galwan, there have been massive calls for boycotting of Chinese goods throughout the country. Viral videos of kids smashing their Chinese mobile devices to political parties burning effigies of Chinese Premier Xi Jinping have been observed. The protestors are of the opinion that business and warfare which harms the nation, cannot happen simultaneously, hence they urge customers not to order from or use the application but use other applications.

Although the parent organization Zomato has not come up with any statement on the issue of continuing investment from a Chinese firm, or the protest by its own employees, the protestors left their own tribute to the martyred soldiers by also taking out a small peace march for the Indian forces on Saturday.

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