According to an internal message written by Goyal to Zomato employees, the company’s founder and CEO, Deepinder Goyal, will donate all of his employee stock option plan (ESOP) earnings worth Rs 700 crore to the Zomato Future Foundation. This is one of the strategies that food tech and rapid commerce companies are taking to reduce delivery executive attrition.
“Right before we went public, I was granted some ESOPs by our investors/ board, basis my past performance, and some of these ESOPs vested last month because there’s a minimum one-year vesting required as per law,” wrote Goyal in the letter addressed to Zomato employees.
The Zomato Future Foundation will be covering the education of up to two children of all Zomato delivery partners, up to Rs 50,000 per child per annum on actuals, above a certain service quality benchmark, who have been on Zomato’s fleet for more than five years, according to the internal memo.
Goyal further said that the amount will go up to Rs 1,00,000 per child per annum if the delivery partner completes 10 years with Zomato. For women delivery partners, the service thresholds will be lower and Zomato Future Foundation will introduce ‘prize money’ for girl children if a girl completes 12th grade and her graduation.
This move comes at a time when Zomato has begun 10-minute delivery and relies on BlinIt for fast commerce. Zomato Future Foundation is not Zomato’s first endeavor. In addition, the food tech business established the Feeding Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to delivering food security to daily wage employees by 2020.
Zomato had also formed the ‘Zomato Gold Support Fund’ in 2020, shortly after the initial lockdown was announced, to assist eateries and their employees. The fund was accessible to donations from all users, and the food tech business stated that all proceeds would be used to assist restaurant workers in need. Users were given an extra year of ‘Zomato Gold’ as an incentive to donate.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the food technology company has also developed new programs for its delivery partners, such as the ‘Rider Relief Fund’ and ‘Covid Insurance.’
Swiggy and Zepto, on the other hand, now allow their delivery partners to join full-time employment in the companies based on their success.
As delivery models evolve, the attrition rate among delivery partners is 18-20% month to month, which becomes a huge challenge for these businesses. Over the last month, corporations have announced a number of initiatives aimed at reducing attrition, indicating that competition in the field is heating up.