Zomato’s CEO Deepinder Goyal has shared a hiring update on the Chief of Staff role that he had previously posted about.
For context, this is the same post that received a lot of backlash from people for setting the wrong precedent of charging candidates a fee for hiring them.
For the Chief of Staff role, Goyal had stated that the selected candidate wouldn't get any salary for the first year. They would also have to pay Rs 20 lakh.
According to him, it wasn't a fancy, well-paying job, but rather a “fast-track learning program” in both personal and professional terms.
In a later update, the Zomato CEO had clarified that the “Rs 20 lakh payment” was merely a filter or a screening tool that was used to find out people who knew how to identify an opportunity for a fast-track career.
Now, Deepinder has shared that out of 18,000+ applications that Zomato received, 30 people have received offers while 18 have already joined Zomato or Blinkit.
Taking to X (formerly Twitter), the Zomato CEO wrote, “We started with 18,000+ applications and have had the privilege of meeting over 150 incredibly talented individuals. From this, 30 exceptional people received offers, and 18 have already joined Zomato (and other group companies like Blinkit) in high-impact roles.”
He added that every person selected is being “handsomely compensated” and no one was asked to pay anything for the role.
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CANDIDATES WHO RECEIVED OFFERS
Highlighting that the thirty candidates who have received offers didn’t have a “short-term” outcome in mind, Deepinder stated that a long-term mindset is what sets them apart.
In his words, “What sets them apart? A long-term mindset. They weren’t optimizing for short-term outcomes but for compounding impact—the most misunderstood mathematical miracle. Finding people who truly get this is rare, and I’m grateful we did.”
The Zomato CEO said that this pool of 30 people comes from a lot of backgrounds—founders who started startups from their dorm rooms, engineers who “rewrote entire tech stacks over a weekend,” operators, and college freshers.
In his post, Deepinder added that 4 people out of the 18 who have already joined Zomato work with him directly. Two of them have filled Chief of Staff roles.
Goyal also stated that the hiring process is not finished and the team will keep reaching out to more people who applied for the role.
He wrote, “With 18,000+ applications, we’re still carefully sifting through this amazing talent pool. This isn’t just a one-time hiring sprint—it’s a long-term investment in the people who will build the future with us. We’ll keep reaching out to the right folks, slowly but surely.”
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