Hundreds of Zomato employees take deep salary cuts owing to COVID-19 lockdown: CEO Deepinder Goyal

Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal on Wednesday announced that several employees have taken deep voluntary salary cuts as the business has been hit owing to the COVID-19 lockdown.

In a series of tweets, Goyal said that dining out in many countries has been badly hit.

"To conserve our own cash flows, hundreds of Zomato employees have taken deep voluntary salary cuts," said the Zomato CEO.

"We are also donating for our delivery partner fund, as well as 'Feed the Daily Wager' campaign to support the community during these times," he added.

Goyal also announced several measures to calm the situation.

"All paid Zomato Gold memberships across India, the UAE, Australia, Indonesia, Philippines, Lebanon, Turkey, New Zealand, Portugal and Qatar will get a two month membership extension at zero cost," he said.

For its Gold partners (dining out), the company said it will facilitate working capital loans to get through this tough time.

Zomato is also going to facilitate loans for its food delivery restaurant partners that have been severely hit because of their immobilised workforce in lockdown.

He said the Zomato is starting a fund to cover up the lost earnings for thousands of its delivery partners.

"We also hope that we get government support to help us with this," Goyal said.

Zomato in January acquired Uber's Food Delivery Business in India in an all-stock Rs 2,500 crore deal where Uber will have 9.99 per cent stake.

Zomato also secured $150 million in fresh funding from Ant Financial, a subsidiary of China-based giant Alibaba.

The latest round of funding in Zomato, which currently value the company at $3 billion, was part of $600 million funding round announced by Zomato CEO Goyal at a Delhi event last December.