Last week news emerged that government food safety officials in Hyderabad raided Zomato's Hyperpure facility in the city. It was widely reported that at the centre, there were packages with future or advanced manufacturing or packaging dates on them.
In all a total of 18 kilograms of button mushrooms were found with label as packed on October 30, 2024.
The Delhi-based delivery and quick service company's boss, Deepinder Goyal, has now issued a statement on the matter. Goyal on November 4 took to his personal X (formerly Twitter) account to issue a clarification on the matter.
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'Manual Error'
In his post on the platform, Goyal said, "Hello all – just want to clarify that the fssai team noted that 90 packets of button mushrooms had incorrect packaging date – these were already identified by our warehouse team and were rejected during an inward QC.
He further added, "This is not usual and was due to a manual typing error on the vendor’s side. Still, the concerned vendor has been delisted from our database. At Hyperpure, we have stringent inward guidelines and tech systems that helped our teams identify this error in time."
Hello all – just want to clarify that the fssai team noted that 90 packets of button mushrooms had incorrect packaging date – these were already identified by our warehouse team and were rejected during an inward QC. This is not usual, and was due to a manual typing error on the…
— Deepinder Goyal (@deepigoyal) November 4, 2024
Committed to Food Safety
Goyal further defended his company and said, "We are committed to upholding industry food safety standards and are focused on not compromising on product quality at any stage of the supply chain. The recent food safety inspection at our Hyderabad warehouse resulted in the Hyperpure warehouse achieving an A+ rating, highest benchmark in their ranking."
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Virality At the Expense of Zomato
Coming down on the media coverage that the issue got, Goyal added, "I am not sure why just these small number of mushroom packets worth Rs 7,200 (out of the crores of inventory in the warehouse), which were never going to make it to customers, are being talked about in the media while we got an A+ rating."
"Maybe some people benefit from the virality that they get at the expense of pulling down the Zomato brand. And maybe we all love to believe the narrative that “all big business is bad business”.
Hypercure is Zomato's restaurant supply chain solution. This arm of Zomato caters to the hotels, restaurants & caterers sector. The company claims to be have services in more than 100 Indian cities and ship more than 4,000 items to more than 40,000 partners.