Zomato announces 26 weeks parental leave for men and women

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Food-tech unicorn Zomato will be offering at least 26 weeks paid leave to its employees as part of its new parental leave policy, to both mothers and fathers, it said in a blog post on Monday. Considering that a child can be financially straining to the young family, the online restaurant guide and food ordering firm will also give the parents an endowment of $1000 (approximately Rs 69,000) per child.

This policy also applies to non-birthing parents, and in cases of surrogacy, adoption, and to same-sex partners, as mentioned in the blog. These policy changes are applicable to even those employees who have had a child within the last six months, it added.

Vivek Choudhary, art director at Zomato, said, “I think it's very thoughtful of Zomato to introduce such a positive policy. There aren't many organisations who would go far to 'balance' the situation. After all, care-giving shouldn't be an exclusive responsibility for young moms. Men can also contribute equally at home. I hope we'll be seeing more and more organizations follow Zomato in adopting this wind of change.”

“We also wish that governments across the world institutionalised paid parental leave (the way Nordics do) – that will be the right thing to do for organisations as well as individuals,” said Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal in the blog post.

“It’s all about having progressive thoughts for your teams to help them perform at their peak. Policies like this are the emotional touch points of employee experience, and help build an aspirational work-culture. Such a policy supports the holistic sense of responsibility in a man, both as a father as well as an equal partner to his spouse. Consequently, it simultaneously makes for a gender sensitive policy,” says Pallavi Jha, chairperson and MD, Dale Carnegie of India, an organisation that works to improve business performance.