Amid layoffs, Zomato plans to hire 800 people across 5 roles

About two months after Zomato Ltd laid off about 3% of its workforce, the food delivery company is planning to hire 800 workers across five roles.

In a LinkedIn post, Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal said that the food ordering firm has about 800 positions open across five roles.

The job vacancies include Chief of Staff to CEO. "As chief of staff to one of our CEOs (Zomato, Blinkit, Hyperpure), you will be nothing less than a force multiplier and mini-CEO for the organisation. You will drive priorities across the organisation to influence outcomes and maintain momentum," the advertisement reads. It further adds that this is "a 24x7 job where the traditional employee mindset of work-life balance won't work."

The other four roles include generalists, product managers, growth managers and software development engineers.

The Gurugram-based online food aggregator had in November 2022 announced a performance-based churn of under 3% of its workforce. In May 2020, the company had laid off 520 employees, or 13% of its workforce.

Zomato has seen high profile exits in recent weeks. Earlier in January, the company's co-founder and chief technology officer Gunjan Patidar resigned from his post. Prior to his departure, three top level executives exited the company in a span of two weeks. These included co-founder Gaurav Gupta, Siddharth Jhawar, ex-vice-president and head of Intercity, and Rahul Ganjoo, head of new initiatives.

Meanwhile, rival Swiggy, too, announced layoffs last week. The food delivery startup will fire 380 employees or 6% of its total workforce. "Our overhiring is a case of poor judgement, and I should've done better here," Swiggy co-founder and CEO Sriharsha Majety wrote in an internal note.

Net loss of Swiggy, which continues to offer hefty discounts to customers, widened to ₹3,628.9 crore for FY22 compared with ₹1,616.9 crore in the previous fiscal. Despite aggressive discounting, the food delivery startup is also losing market share to Zomato, according to foreign brokerage Jefferies.

However, the brokerage sees a strong case for Swiggy dropping its aggressive stance in food delivery in a bid to reduce its losses. "And in the case that does not happen, Zomato may be induced to increase its aggression to drive growth. With aggression continuing from Swiggy on discounting and its flagship program, Swiggy One, Zomato may come up with Pro membership in some form," Jefferies said in a note in November last year.