Dear all,

Thank you very much for your support. I’m thrilled to see that 7200+ individuals have now signed the petition for equal rights for the LGBTQ Community.

Last week, Zomato announced that it fully supports the LGBTQ Community and is creating an “LGBTQ friendly” tag to display on restaurants which do not discriminate against the community. The tag will be launched by mid-May and will help us to easily identify restaurants which offer safe spaces for our community, a feature that currently no online restaurant listing site offers in India. It might also encourage other restaurants to open their doors to the LGBTQ community.

Many people have expressed their thanks to Zomato for promising to take this step.

One user said, “Zomato is doing incredible work. Getting people to see it's okay to have lgbtq customers as they are same as others will take time. Forcing things will just make it worse. Also, when I'm on a date I can't randomly pick a restaurant and assume it to be friendly; an lgbtq tag would be incredible.”

However, many are not satisfied by Zomato’s response and have criticised the idea of an “LGBTQ friendly” tag for being discriminatory itself.

Tania Singh, CEO of Make Love Not Scars, an NGO that supports acid attack survivors said, "The tag seems extremely misguided and sad and angers me because guess what - all restaurants should be human friendly. This is a weak stand for a great community. If you really cared about the community, you know what you would do? Ban all restaurants from your platform that discriminate against the LGBTQ community. Don’t give them your platform. End of story."

Another user said, "This is a terrible idea. It further emboldens restaurant owners to believe they reserve the right to discriminate against customers."

In response to that, a user said, “Just like couple friendly hotels, it's LGBTQ friendly restaurants. No business would want to be branded non-LGBTQ friendly as they know the consequences of being one. This will make them more aware about the LGBTQ community and acceptance. The negative side is yes, it feels discriminatory, but good things come with some drawbacks.”.

I have emailed these responses to the Zomato team and made the following suggestions:

• Run extensive sensitization programs for all restaurant partners and positively influence them so that they are open to all guests regardless of their gender or sexuality.
• For restaurants which continue to ban entry to guests based on their gender or sexuality, temporarily disable their access to Zomato's business growth features like Gold, Table Booking, Food Delivery, etc. as these directly contribute towards the revenue of these homophobic establishments. 

I hope Zomato considers these suggestions and soon assures its LGBTQ users that it will take stringent, effective and meaningful measures to curb discrimination by their restaurant partners against their guests.

Please continue to share the petition with your friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances, etc. and request them to sign it and reshare it: change.org/zomatoforlgbtq

To achieve the best possible resolution of this issue, both me and Zomato, seek your inputs. Please share your feedback or suggestions below in the comments or DM me: www.facebook.com/jeet91

Thank you very much once again for being strong advocates for equal rights!

Regards,

Indrajeet