Four days after the completion of a fundraiser to purchase a bike for Hyderabad-based Zomato delivery executive Mohd Aqeel Ahmed, he took home his new bike on the morning of Friday, June 18. Aqeel, a 21-year-old engineering student who is also a delivery executive for Zomato, had been using a bicycle to deliver orders for the last year. On June 14, he delivered an order to Robin Mukesh, a city resident. When Mukesh found out that his order, placed from a restaurant nine kilometres away, had been delivered by Aqeel on his bicycle within 20 minutes, he decided to share Aqeel's story in an appreciation post on Facebook.
After seeing a lot of positive responses, Mukesh decided to start a fundraising campaign to help Aqeel purchase a bike. With the help of fellow members of a Facebook foodies’ group called The Great Hyderabad Food and Travel Club, a fundraiser was started on June 15. Within 10 hours, they were able to raise Rs 73,370, which even surpassed their target amount. The fundraiser was successfully completed on June 16.
With the money from the fundraiser, a TVS XL 100, which costs Rs 65,801, was booked for Aqeel. The bike was handed over to him at around 11 am on June 18. Expressing his joy to TNM, Aqeel said, “When I finally received my bike I was very excited and I had never expected this to happen. I got so emotional that I couldn’t hold my tears back. But of course, they were tears of joy.”
Read: Hyderabadis raise funds to buy bike for Zomato delivery person who used a bicycle
Aqeel has been working with Zomato for a year, and was using his bicycle for deliveries in this time. He said that he had requested the management to assign him deliveries within a 4-5 km radius, but still received orders for delivery 8-10 km away. Before getting a bike, Aqeel used to work for around 10 to 12 hours every day, delivering roughly 20 orders on his bicycle. Now, he says he will be able to complete his deliveries with ease [complete more deliveries?].