During his podcast with Raj Shamani, Zomato co-founder Deepinder Goyal faced some tough questions. One of the topics of discussion was his “inhuman” side as the head of the company.
Shamani mentions that Zomato has laid off 500-600 employees in April 2025. Goyal looks a little confused. Raj confirms this and says that the fired employees were from customer support. Deepinder tries to think hard.
“It is described as ‘Cold Termination’ and ‘Inhuman Treatment’,” reads Raj Shamani.
“This news was wrong,” countered Deepinder Goyal.
Raj Shamani hesitates to believe Deepinder’s counterpoint. He wonders if the message was really wrong. It mentions that these employees have reportedly had their Slack accounts disabled and denied access.
Deepinder further states that the number is around 20. These employees were dismissed after a performance review. It was “purely” based on that after “months of feedback”, he adds.
“And someone went on Reddit and posted this drama,” says the Zomat boss.
Raj Shamani still wonders if it was really fake news. Deepinder stands firm and says the company has chosen not to counter the claims. It indicates that it does not attach importance to such fabricated reports.
“We let it go. We don’t condone those things,” he says.
A Zomato employee fired 28 minutes late
The podcaster refuses to ‘let it go’. He says there have been reports of someone being fired for being 28 minutes late.
Deepinder Goyal also denies this.
“The guy had to be ’28 minutes’ late for three months to get fired. How does that work when you work around the clock? That’s not great,” says Eternal’s CEO.
“This is customer care. We can’t have that. If there’s a problem with an order and there’s no one to take care of it, how does that work? Some functions work 24/7. It’s capacity planning,” he continues.
“If we don’t ask this person who’s 28 minutes late, and everyone starts being 28 minutes late, we have absolutely no one in the job after those 28 minutes. How can we accept that? It’s not like the person wasn’t warned. People just abuse social media. And we just let it go,” he adds.
Deepinder Goyal faces criticism
These days, Deepinder Goyal is facing strong criticism online amid nationwide protests by gig workers against e-commerce platforms. Delivery workers of Zomato, Blinkit, Swiggy and Zepto went on strike on December 25 and 31 over low wages, fuel costs and inadequate social security.
Goyal defended the concert model. He refused to call it “unfair”. The gig economy only makes inequality “visible,” he said. Goyal also referred to some of the protesters as “ungodly”.
According to his critics, the Zomato co-founder ignores low net earnings, shifts the blame to consumers and displays elitist hypocrisy. There have been many articles and online comments against Goyal’s approach to gig workers.
