New Delhi: Hours after food delivery company sacked a customer care executive for telling a customer he ought to know Hindi as it is the national language, the company’s cofounder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said the employee had been reinstated and called for tolerance.

Goyal termed the employee’s actions “an ignorant mistake” but said the company was reinstating her as “this is easily something she can learn and do better about going forward”.

“An ignorant mistake by someone in a support centre of a food delivery company became a national issue. The level of tolerance and chill in our country needs to be way higher than it is nowadays… We are reinstating the agent – this alone is not something she should have been fired for. This is easily something she can learn and do better about going forward,” Goyal said in a tweet.

Earlier, the company came under fire on Twitter after the customer, from Tamil Nadu, posted screenshots of his chat with the Zomato employee.

“Customer care says amount can’t be refunded as I didn’t know Hindi. Also takes lesson that being an Indian I should know Hindi. Tagged me a liar as he didn’t know Tamil. @zomato not the way you talk to a customer,” he wrote.

The tweet triggered a storm on Twitter, and soon #Reject_Zomato was trending.

Following the backlash, Zomato apologised to Vikash and said that the incident was unacceptable. It also issued a statement both in Tamil and English, stressing that the company stood for diversity.

“We have terminated the agent for their negligence towards our diverse culture. The termination is in line with our protocols and (the) agent’s behaviour was clearly against the principles of sensitivity that we train our agents for on a regular basis,” the statement read.

But a little over two hours later, Goyal tweeted that Zomato was reinstating the sacked employee.

Zomato also said in its statement that it was building a Tamil version of its app and that it had already localised its marketing communication in the state. It added that it was in the process of building a Tamil support centre in Coimbatore.