Zomato has been innovating on its product in recent times, but it seems to be innovating with its job roles as well.
Zomato has advertised a job role in which candidates will receive no salary, but will instead have to pay Rs. 20 lakh to the company to be selected. “I’m looking for a Chief of Staff for myself,” Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal posted on X. “There is no salary for this role for the first year. You will have to, in fact, pay Rs. 20 lacs for this opportunity,” the job description says.
The job description said that Zomato was looking for someone who “is hungry, has a lot of common sense, empathy, and not a lot of experience (and therefore no conditioning/baggage)”. The posting added that the candidate would need to be down to earth and have zero entitlement. They would always want to do the right thing, even at the expense of displeasing others. The candidate would additionally need to have “Grade A communication skills” and a learning mindset.
The posting said that the candidate would work on “anything and everything” to build the future of Zomato. Zomato claimed that the role would get candidates “10x more learnings than a 2-year degree from a top management school”, and an opportunity to work directly with Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal.
But Zomato said that this wasn’t a regular job role. “This role is not a conventional role with the usual perks that such jobs come with. In fact, we are making this job unattractive for most people,” Zomato said. “There is no salary for this role for the first year. You will have to, in fact, pay Rs. 20 lacs for this opportunity. 100% of this “fee” will be paid in the form of a donation directly to Feeding India (if you are offered the role, and you accept it),” Zomato said. “At our end, we want to demonstrate that we are not trying to save money here – we will contribute Rs. 50 lacs (equivalent to a Chief of Staff salary) to a charity of your choice,” Zomato added. Zomato said that second year onwards, they’ll start paying candidates the usual salary which will “definitely” be more than Rs. 50 lakhs.
“We believe that people who apply for this role should do it for the learning opportunity it presents, rather than for a fancy well paying job which will make you look cool in front of yourself, or the people you want to impress.
Put differently, think of this as a fast track learning program, for you both personally and professionally – whether or not you succeed at this role. And we want learners for this role, not résumé builders,” Zomato explained.
It’s a pretty unusual job description. Zomato seems to believe that this opportunity is more valuable than an MBA, and wants candidates to pay up for it like they would for an management degree. Zomato will also be able to whittle down the number of applications because the Rs. 20 lakh fee and no salary would ensure that only serious candidates apply.
But the post has received mixed reactions on social media. While some people appreciated the innovative nature of the role, most panned the post, with some saying that the Rs. 20 lakh bar would keep deserving candidates away from the opportunity, and others said that all this talk of “opportunity” was similar to how unpaid internships exploited less experienced employees. Some even expressed concerns on how Zomato would handle the situation if they chose to fire the candidate after the first years. It remains to be seen how Zomato fills this role, but there’s little denying that along with innovative product launches like a veg-only fleet, scheduled orders and even food rescue, Zomato seems to be rethinking HR from first principles as well.