Why Deepinder Goyal’s Tweets Sparked So Much Heat

Is Deepinder Goyal being unfairly criticised for his latest tweets?

A delivery bicycle on a rainy city street at night Deepinder Goyal’s January 1, 2026 tweets hit a nerve for a predictable reason: they sit right at the intersection of India’s loudest, most unresolved argument—gig work—plus a cultural flashpoint (New Year’s Eve), plus a platform CEO speaking with CEO confidence.

So, is he being unnecessarily criticised? Largely, yes. The pile-on feels disproportionate to what he actually said. But the backlash also isn’t coming from nowhere; it’s the accumulated anger around the gig economy snapping onto the nearest high-visibility target.

Here’s how I’m thinking about it.

What he actually said (and why it landed like a grenade)

Goyal’s posts were essentially a victory lap with a rebuttal attached.

He said Zomato and Blinkit delivered record volumes on New Year’s Eve (over 75 lakh orders).
He credited the “vast majority” of delivery partners for choosing to work despite strike calls.
He framed disruptions as being caused by a tiny minority—he used the “0.1%” framing—and described them as “miscreants” who allegedly intimidated others, with police involvement.
He defended the 10-minute quick-commerce model by arguing it’s a logistics design problem, not a “ride like a maniac” problem: dense store networks, short distances (he referenced ~2 km), and no rush timers in the app.
He made the standard “if this were fundamentally unfair, people wouldn’t join and stay” argument.
And he wrapped it in an optimistic narrative: gig work as one of India’s biggest organised job-creation engines, with multi-year social benefits.

That mix—numbers, pride, dismissal of critics, and a moral framing of the business—creates a very specific kind of outrage. Not because it’s uniquely evil, but because it’s a CEO speaking like the debate is settled.

Why the criticism feels disproportionate

A lot of the reaction reads like people responding to the category (rich platform CEO) more than the content (what these tweets actually claim).

1) The “how dare you celebrate” reflex is misplaced

If record deliveries happened, and most delivery partners did show up, it’s not inherently immoral to say so. Companies track these spikes obsessively. That operational reality doesn’t become illegitimate because it’s politically inconvenient.

Critics often slide from “people worked under pressure” to “therefore the company cannot acknowledge throughput.” But acknowledging throughput is what companies do—especially during events that are predictably high-demand.

2) His logistics argument isn’t crazy

The 10-minute delivery debate is emotionally loaded because everyone imagines the same movie scene: a rider weaving through traffic because an app timer is ticking down.

Goyal’s counter is basically: the system is designed so that speed comes from distance compression, not human risk-taking. Dense store networks, short trips, route predictability—those are the levers. Whether you agree with his framing or not, it’s a legitimate argument and it challenges a common assumption (“10 minutes” must mean dangerous).

People are allowed to disagree. But disagreeing isn’t the same thing as treating the explanation as propaganda by definition.

3) “If it were unfair, people wouldn’t do it” is blunt—not uniquely outrageous

This line triggers people because it’s the classic free-market defence of voluntary participation, and it can sound like: “They’re choosing it, so stop complaining.”

But it’s not some novel, villainous invention. It’s a common CEO argument—often incomplete, sometimes insensitive, but not proof of malice.

If the response is to dissect the limitations of “choice” under economic constraint, fine. If the response is personal vilification as if he just justified feudalism, it starts looking like outrage hunting.

4) The online reaction often escalates into theatre

A portion of the backlash tends to shift quickly from policy critique into:

personal insults,
maximalist comparisons,
demands that don’t engage with operational trade-offs,
and the assumption that every corporate statement is bad faith.

That kind of reaction doesn’t “protect workers.” It just turns a complex labour conversation into a morality play.

Why the criticism isn’t baseless either

There’s a reason those tweets hit such a raw nerve: gig work already carries unresolved grievances, and CEOs don’t get to speak as neutral narrators.

1) Words like “miscreants” are a self-inflicted wound

Calling protesting workers (or even a small disruptive subset) “miscreants” is not a neutral description. It’s delegitimising language, and it carries a whiff of “law and order” superiority that people associate with union-busting everywhere.

Even if there truly were intimidation or disruption, the phrasing matters. A CEO can describe misconduct without branding the whole episode as criminal nuisance. When you’re the platform that controls pay, access, and ratings, your tone lands heavier than you think it does.

2) Celebrating “they still worked” can sound like celebrating desperation

When you praise people for working through a strike call, you’re stepping into a sensitive zone. Critics will read it as: “They can’t afford to strike, and I’m proud of that.”

Now, that might not be what he meant. But if you’re a platform CEO, you don’t get to pretend you’re unaware of how economic pressure functions. Many gig workers aren’t making choices inside a comfortable set of options. They’re making choices under constraint. When you publicly frame that as pure enthusiasm, you invite backlash.

3) Safety and pressure aren’t solved by saying “no rush timer”

Even if there’s no explicit rush timer in the app, the promise of “10 minutes” creates ambient pressure. Customers expect it. Marketing normalises it. Riders know late deliveries can lead to complaints, ratings issues, or reduced future earnings (even when policies say otherwise, perceptions matter).

So yes: “we don’t force speed” is not the same as “speed pressure doesn’t exist.” The truth can be messier than either side wants.

4) Power imbalance is the core story, and CEOs can’t talk past it

Gig work debates often come down to this: platforms have asymmetrical power over workers, even if the relationship is technically “voluntary.” Access to orders, incentives, penalties, ratings, onboarding/offboarding—these are platform-controlled levers that shape behaviour.

So when a CEO argues “if it were unfair, people wouldn’t join,” critics hear: “I control the system, I’m benefiting from it, and I’m also declaring it fair.”

That’s why the temperature rises fast. Not because his tweets are uniquely shocking, but because they are spoken from the top of a power pyramid.

The real issue: people aren’t only reacting to tweets

The intensity of backlash makes more sense if you treat the tweets as a trigger, not the cause.

There’s already:

long-running suspicion that quick commerce offloads cost onto labour,
public anxiety about road safety,
ongoing debates about pay transparency and benefits,
and a broader resentment toward “growth at all costs” narratives.

So when Goyal posts a confident thread saying, essentially, “the model works, people want to work, critics are a tiny disruptive minority,” it doesn’t land as one CEO’s opinion. It lands as the whole system talking back.

That’s why some people respond with nuance, and others respond with rage. They’re not only arguing with him—they’re arguing with what he represents.

So, is he being criticised unnecessarily?

Yes, in the sense that much of the criticism is more heat than light. A thread about record deliveries and logistics design shouldn’t automatically be treated like a moral confession.

But no, in the sense that CEOs don’t get to act surprised when they speak dismissively about worker dissent—especially in a sector already under scrutiny. If you choose the language of “miscreants” and “tiny minority,” you’re choosing polarisation. And polarisation is a boomerang.

Conclusion

Goyal’s tweets read less like cruelty and more like a CEO doing what CEOs do: defend the model, celebrate the numbers, and frame dissent as noise. The backlash feels amplified by deeper gig-economy tensions that were already waiting for a moment to erupt. At the same time, some of the phrasing—especially around protesters—was a needless provocation that made it easy for critics to paint him as anti-worker. Two things can be true: the pile-on is excessive, and the communication was avoidably tone-deaf.