Zomato to Give 26-week Paid Parental Leave to Both New Mothers and Fathers

In a path-breaking announcement, Gurgaon-based start-up Zomato said on Monday that its employees across the globe will be offered 26 weeks of paid parental leave, irrespective of their gender.

“For women across the globe (we have teams in 13 countries as we speak), we will be offering 26 weeks paid leave, or will follow the government mandated policy, whichever is more. We will be offering exactly the same benefits to men as well. There won’t be even an iota of difference in parental leave policy for men and women at Zomato going forward,” Zomato CEO and founder Deepinder Goyal said in a blog post.

Zomato has also announced an endowment of $1,000 per child (around Rs 69,000 in India) to the employees on its rolls who become new parents.

Notably, the policy also applies to non-birthing parents, and even in cases of surrogacy, adoption, and same-sex partners. And the benefits can be availed by even those Zomato employees who have had a child within the last six months.

“I believe that young parents should be able to make a choice of how to care for their children. And that a myopic view of primary care-giving not only alienates one half of our workforce, but also creates circumstances that lead to fewer female leaders within organisations, the community and the nation,” said Goyal.

He said one core issue that leads to fewer women leaders is the lack of universal paid parental leave. And that currently it is hard for women to lead a healthy family life and focus on their careers, leading to a lot of women leaving their jobs or putting their careers on the back burner.

He added that even if an organisation wants to focus on gender balance in the senior ranks within, it is almost impossible to do that because of the supply bias. Goyal admitted that it has been hard for Zomato as well to find women leaders at senior levels, which pushed the company to rethink on the parental leave policy.

Currently, there is no provision of paid paternity leave of employees of private companies under Indian labour laws. But as a general practice, male employees are given one-two weeks of paid leave after they become parents.