Zomato co-founder Deepinder Goyal has donated ₹700 crore worth of stocks to Zomato Future Foundation to finance the education of children of its delivery partners.
Before Zomato went public in 2021, Goyal was granted some ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) by the investors and board on the basis of his performance and some of the ESOPs vested last month. He is donating all the proceeds to ZFF which will cover education of up to two children of all Zomato delivery partners, up to ₹50,000 per child per annum who have been on Zomato’s fleet for more than five years. This will go up to ₹1 lakh per child per annum of the delivery partner completes 10 years in the company.
In the memo shared to the company, Goyal added, “Service thresholds of 5/10 years will be lower for women delivery partners. We will also have special programmes for girl children and introduce ‘prize money’ if a girl completes 12th grade, as well as her graduation.”
Goyal, who launched Zomato in 2010, is hopeful that this will play a pivotal role in kids’ future. “I also hope that some of these kids grow up to leading the charge at various businesses that we build within Zomato over time, in addition to starting new companies that change the future course of our country,” he added.
Deepinder, who graduated from IIT-Delhi, ventured into the corporate world with Bain & Company. It was here that the idea germinated when he saw a sea of crowd struggling to place the order at the canteen during mealtimes. With the help from his colleague Pankaj Chaddah, he came up with a creative solution for saving time spent while ordering food. That was the beginning of Foodiebay.com. With the revenue trickling in, Goyal and Chaddah decided to turn their side hustle into a proper business. They quit Bain in 2009 and decided to start their own company. Soon Sanjeev Bikhchandani of InfoEdge invested into it, and with rebranding it was introduced to the world as Zomato.