In order to bring in a positive change in its organisation and the society Zomato has introduced new parental leave policy which offers 26 week paid leave to all its employees – men, women and also non birthing parents including same-sex partners, surrogacy and adoption. 

The startup has also announced a $1,000 bonus per child for new parents. The newly introduced policy also holds for employees of the company who have had kids in the last six months. 

The financial benefits come in as primary-childcare costs have skyrocketed in India. Zomato founder, Deepinder Goyal took to Twitter to share the announcement. 

“One core issue that leads to fewer women leaders in organisations, the community, and the nation is the lack of universal paid parental leave. 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 career on the back burner. This results in a pressing lack of diversity diversity across all levels of the organization, and needs to be solved proactively.” Deepinder shared in a blogpost.

In 2017, India had passed the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill, 2016, which had increased the maternity leaves available to working women from 12 weeks to 26 weeks for the first two children. However, for the paternity leave it was only two weeks.

Zomato, in its blog has also urged the governments across the world to institutionalise paid parental leave, and said that will be the right thing to do for organisations as well as individuals.

“We will never have truly gender-neutral organisations unless we have gender-neutral communities and gender-neutral nations,” Deepinder said.