This week Zomato, the food-delivery startup backed by China’s Ant Financial, landed smack in the middle of a religious debate, and took a very public stance.

On Wednesday, a customer tweeted that he had canceled a delivery order with Zomato because the delivery agent was Muslim, and the company refused to replace him and also declined to refund the order. The user has since deleted his comments, although screenshots of the tweet are still available.

Zomato shared the customer’s tweet with its own response: “Food doesn’t have a religion. It is a religion.”

Deepinder Goyal, Zomato’s cofounder, also chimed in by tweeting: “We are proud of the idea of India – and the diversity of our esteemed customers and partners. We aren’t sorry to lose any business that comes in the way of our values.” And that’s when Twitter did what it always does in circumstances like this: It went crazy, with politicians, celebrities and scores of ordinary folks piping in to express their views.

Omar Abdullah, former chief minister of the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir tweeted: “Respect. I love your app. Thank you for giving me a reason to admire the company behind it.”

P. Chidambaram, a senior leader of the Congress party, saidwhile he hadn’t ordered food online so far, he would “do so now from Zomato.”

Billionaire Harsh Goenka, who chairs the RPG Group, also applauded the company with “Respect.”

Actor Vijay Varma patted Zomato on the back with a “big ups” and in a dig at right wing believers said perhaps it was time for politically connected yoga guru Ramdev (who cofounded consumer goods giant Patanjali Ayurved with billionaire Acharya Balkrishna) to start a food delivery service where the delivery agents would come on cows.

Even Zomato competitor Uber Eats chimed in with its own message of support.

But not all of the commentary was so supportive. Some users slammed Zomato, and said they had deleted their app.

Arvind Singhal, chairman of consultancy Technopak, said taking a stand like the company did was only good for “getting Twitter excited,” but it actually does more damage than good.

“We are living in a society that for thousands of years has been polarized for multiple things, with no rationale in them, with many prejudices that are very overt and very deep-rooted,” he said. “You can’t change the thinking of a billion people just by going on Twitter.”

The sensible thing to do, he says, would be to quietly blacklist the user, if its technology allowed that. Companies can take a stand in their actions rather than by wearing it on their sleeves, he says. “In the process you polarize people much more,” he said.

A company’s first responsibility is to make money for its shareholders, the right way, said Singhal. “First be a great company in terms of success.”