If you’re quite a lot on the internet, you probably know about the Flipkart ‘racist’ ad controversy that took the internet by storm for quite some days last week. If you don’t exactly know what we are talking about, here’s a quick recap: India’s leading e-commerce company Flipkart had been airing two TVCs for its latest service – Flipkart Assured. The advertisements had two watchmen and one of them was wearing a Bhadgauley Topi, the traditional hat of Nepalese and Gorkha people. The Gorkha community in India and people in Nepal didn’t receive the ads well and were offended that they are being stereotyped as watchmen, like the Indian TV industry and Bollywood always do. Gorkha Youth And Students’ Association of India (GYASA) even filed a complaint against the company to the Delhi Police.

Understanding the seriousness of the entire issue, Flipkart was pretty quick in making an effort to calm the offended people down. The company published a blogpost titled ‘From Flipkart, a note to our Gorkha brothers and sisters’ on their official website on August 29th. The note said, “While we’re delighted with the positive response, we are aware that we may have unintentionally hurt the sentiments of our Gorkha brothers and sisters through the depiction of one of the characters in the advertisement, namely the security guard.”

It further read:

“Foremost, we’re proud of and grateful to the Gorkha community. They symbolize valor, reliability, integrity and loyalty. Many members of the Gorkha community continue to represent our nation in the highest echelons of their chosen fields – be it administration, sports, defense, academics, entertainment, etc. Some of them have also chosen this profession of a security guard.

A security guard is someone we trust with our life. Every day. We trust our security guards to let the right people into our homes. We trust them with our children’s safety when they’re outdoors. We trust them to ensure that we sleep safe every night. The campaign drew from these codes of assurance to drive the key proposition of Flipkart Assured. It is with this intent that the character which the child portrayed was chosen to play the part.”

And in an attempt to end the controversy, this is what they did:

“In line with the feedback, we have updated the advertisements to remove the depiction of the Khukuri and suitably changed the voices of the characters. The films have been uploaded on our social channels and will be progressively updated across all other channels in next few days.”

Read the full note from Flipkart HERE.

Well, though it doesn’t exactly sound like an apology, at least the people at Flipkart admitted that they “unintentionally” hurt the sentiments of Gorkha people. And most importantly, the two ads have been replaced. The watchman who was initially intended to be shown as a Nepali/Gorkha doesn’t look like one now as he doesn’t have the Khukuri insignia on his hat and even his name has been changed from ‘Bahadur’ to ‘Sher Dil’. Moreover, the voice has been replaced and he doesn’t talk in the ‘stereotyped’ tone anymore, like he did in the original ads.

It isn’t exactly an apology, but we will take it, whatever it is. Appreciated.

Watch the new ads here: