Food delivery app CEO’s bizarre ad seeking chief of staff without pay gets 10k responses

Candidate, if hired, must also pay company nearly £19,000

The CEO of an Indian food delivery company has put out an ad seeking a chief of staff with a rather unusual caveat—the candidate must be fine with not receiving a salary for the first year and, what is more, be willing to pay nearly £19,000.

Deepinder Goyal, CEO of Zomato, posted the ad on social media on Wednesday.

According to Mr Goyal’s post, the ideal candidate is “hungry, has a lot of common sense, empathy and not a lot of experience”. They also have “zero entitlement” and want “to do the right thing, even if it comes at the cost of displeasing others”.

The job description isn’t too specific about what the position entails. It simply says the candidate must do “anything and everything to build the future of Zomato” and goes on to list the names of several startups that it has acquired over the years.

As far as salary is concerned, it says the candidate, if hired, must pay a sum of Rs 20 lakh (£18,736), which the company will donate to a non-profit organisation. Once the candidate has completed a year at the company, they will receive a salary that Mr Goyal says will be above Rs 50 lakh (£46,841), “but something we will only talk about at the start of Year 2”.

Mr Goyal goes on to explain that he chose to make this role “unattractive for most people” and that the right candidate should agree to pay the fee since his company believes “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”.

He wants potential candidates to think of the position as a “fast track learning program, for you both personally and professionally”. Those interested must send a 200-word cover letter to Mr Goyal.

On Thursday, Mr Goyal posted an update on social media saying he had received over 10,000 applications, with candidates divided into four categories: “Those 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.”

The ad drew considerable backlash on social media. One commentator pointed out that Mr Goyal posted the same listing last year and had still not managed to fill the role, while others questioned the exorbitant fee the candidate has to pay.

“Only in India (where 60% of the population lives on less than $3 a day) can a CEO publicly post a job offer that demands the candidate pay a 20 lac fee up front,” said one commentator.

“One of the things which frustrates me a lot is that people assume you are not passionate about your job (or good at it!) without willing to do insane things like this. Or that asking for something as basic as a salary somehow makes you less inclined to do well or care enough,” said another.

India’s Minimum Wages Act 1948 requires all companies pay employees and independent contractors the mandated minimum wage, the amount of which varies by state.

Some have called out Mr Goyal’s post as a way to distract from the fact that his company has been under scrutiny after users discovered “one-dish” restaurants listed on its platform, which were likely selling prohibited items.

The restaurants had likely gamed the application by listing their “dishes” under generic names like “Naughty Strawberry” and “Merry Berry”.

Zomato responded to this with a statement saying: “We have identified all such restaurants that were potentially fraudulent and have delisted them from our platform. To solve this more comprehensively, we have also investigated all other restaurants which have a very limited menu on Zomato and might have listed prohibited items or worked around a way to list prohibited items.

“As per our policy, all restaurants listed on Zomato need to have a FSSAI licence and we also actively block items such as alcohol, cigarettes/cigars/vapes from being listed on our platform.”