Another twist in Zomato job row, Deepinder Goyal takes back ₹20 lakh fee caveat
CEO Deepinder Goyal has shared another update about the ongoing zero-salary job row over role of the Chief of Staff at Zomato.
In yet another twist, Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal, who has been under fire for sharing a job posting which pays no salary, has revealed that the condition was only imposed as a filter to reach the best candidates for the role of his Chief of Staff.
This comes after the CEO was criticised on X for sharing that his future Chief of Staff will not be paid any salary for the first year of the job and would instead have to pay ₹20 lakh to Zomato as a donation to its Feeding India initiative.
In a third update since his controversial post, the CEO said that the company has received over 18,000 applications.
"This wasn't just another hiring post. As some people pointed out, the "you have to pay us 20 lacs" was merely a filter, to find people who had the power to appreciate the opportunity of a fast track career, without getting bogged down by the constraints in front of them," he said, adding that applicants who talked about being willing to pay the money or having the money to pay Zomato will be rejected," he said.
Take a look at the post here:
(Also read: Deepinder Goyal has been searching for a chief of staff for nearly 2 years)
In the last update, Goyal had listed the types of people who have applied for the position. He said the applicants include people who have all the money, those who have some of the money, those who say they don’t have the money and those who really don’t have the money.
However, he said that a lot of the applications were “well thought through." He also added that the application inbox will be closed by 6 pm today. “Stay tuned for Update 3,” he wrote.
Deepinder Goyal's second update:
Outrage over zero salary job
Internet was not pleased after Goyal said that he was looking for a Chief of Staff who was “down to earth”, had “zero entitlement” and would be willing to essentially pay for the privilege of working alongside hime. While he clarified that the chosen candidate would be paid the usual salary from the second year, he said that the decision would be made after the end of the first year. This new salary would exceed ₹50 LPA, he promised.
(Also read: Deepinder Goyal trolled for asking job candidate to pay ₹20 lakh for Zomato role)
Many were shocked to see the CEO of one of India’s leading startups proposing a ₹20 lakh price for a job at his company, which they said automatically rejects millions of Indians who did not have such a large amount of cash lying around.
Others labelled it as an ‘unpaid internship’ and called Goyal out for setting a bad precedent for companies. “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',” one user wrote.
