Deepinder Goyal trolled for asking job candidate to pay ₹20 lakh for Zomato role

Deepinder Goyal has copped massive backlash after advertising for a chief of staff vacancy where the successful candidate would donate ₹20 lakh for the role.

Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal has copped massive backlash after advertising for a chief of staff vacancy where the successful candidate will not be paid a salary for the first year, but will instead have to donate ₹20 lakh for the privilege of working for him. Goyal, 41, shared the job posting on his X account, writing: “There is no salary for this role for the first year. You will have to, in fact, pay ₹20 lacs for this opportunity.”

Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal is being trolled for his job posting(Instagram/@founders.talks)

The Zomato 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.

He also clarified that the chosen candidate would be paid the usual salary from the second year onward. This salary would exceed ₹50 LPA, he promised.

Besides the ability to afford ₹20 lakhs as a one-time payment, further requirements for the chief of staff role included someone with a lot of “common sense, empathy and not a lot of experience.” Deepinder Goyal added that the successful candidate would get more out of the job than any MBA.

Backlash online

The hiring post, predictably, did not go over well on social media. Many people were stunned to see the CEO of one of India’s leading startups expecting a job-seeker to pay ₹20 lakh for the privilege of working under him. They noted how Goyal, with this condition, had already sidelined millions of Indians who did not have extra cash lying around.

Still others called it nothing more than an ‘unpaid internship’ or even worse, and worried that such jobs could soon become the norm.

The post, naturally, became the target of much mockery.

“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 named Abhishek.

“Bad idea. Please pay. 3 months into it, if you feel the person is not the right fit. He will lose a lot of money. And will gain nothing but a bitter experience,” another said.

X user Aman was among the many people who said that with his ₹20 lakh condition, Deepinder Goyal had already alienated a promising pool of talent. “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',” he wrote.

“Major L. By offering zero salary, you have already filtered for privilege. Just like the UN unpaid internships. Any person who has bills to pay for family cannot apply for this post,” Mohak Mangal opined.