Zomato founder wants Chief of Staff: No salary, pay Rs 20 lakh instead

Deepinder Goyal, the CEO of the food-delivery giant Zomato took to social media to announce the fact that he’s on the hunt for a chief of staff. However, the CEO said the candidate offered the role will not be paid any salary for the first year and will instead have to pay ₹20 lakh to the company.

His post has received a lot of backlash from netizens while some have praised the move. 

Sharing a job posting for the role on his X account, Goyal wrote: “Update: I am looking for a chief of staff for myself. Someone who is hungry, has a lot of common sense, empathy, and not a lot of experience (and therefore no conditioning/baggage). Is down to earth, and has zero entitlement. Wants to do the right thing, even if it comes at the cost of displeasing others. Has Grade A communication skills and most importantly, has a learning mindset," the post read.

He further mentioned that the role will be unpaid for a year thereafter, and the company is ready to offer “the usual salary (definitely more than 50 lakhs, but something we will only talk about at the start of year 2.” 

The post says “There is no salary for this role for the first year. You will have to pay ₹20 lacs for this opportunity.” 

The founder and CEO explained that 100% of this ‘fee’ will be paid directly in the form of a donation to Feeding India, Zomato’s non-profit arm.

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Backlash and praise 

Many did not positively receive Goyal’s job posting. The online community accused the founder of filtering the pool of candidates by the job’s conditions. 

“As if exploiting the gig economy workers wasn’t enough, now kick the middle class parent cause food delivery company with inflated pricing wants a chief of staff,” wrote one X user.

“Hire me as your PR manager and I'll save you from making such tweets in the future,” said another response.

“Asking 20L from little experience adds an artificial selection for rich kids with daddy's money. This means the candidate pool is of folks with high risk-taking capacity but also possible that the candidate pool is of people quite distant from 'India'. Interesting,” a user noted. 

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While others praised the founder for his ability to pick out the most passionate individuals for his company. 

“This is the ultimate filter of talent. From this, you'll not just get someone brilliant professionally, but you'll find someone who understands how risk works. Someone who can pay 20L + have additional savings worth 10L to live in Gurgaon DEFINITELY would currently be at a 20L+ salary. Probably close to 30ish. By putting a figure of 50L as the year 2 base salary, combined with the 20L down-payment, DG has completed de-risked himself. This person will have more skin in the game than most of Zomato top management and I can't wait to learn more about the person who cracks this. The charity bit is a cute PR touch as well,” a LinkedIn user said.

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