Zomato is hiring for the chief of staff position. But there is a twist. The person who gets selected pays 20 lacs to the company. Their rationale is to discourage people who want to appear cool to themselves or impress others. Skin in the game is what Zomato demands. In return you get the valuable experience.

This makes sense.

A PGP max program at ISB would cost you Rs 42 lacs + taxes. Any mid-senior executive with over 8-12 years of experience can take a bet on Zomato’s proposition. It has a good risk/reward ratio. Maybe 3X ROI in year two. In contrast, the PGP max program has a much lower risk-to-reward ratio.

But that’s not the point.

This out-of-the-box hiring strategy might attract the very talent that Deepinder wants to evade — the ones who want to appear cool. He might get the wealthy and cool combo in this case.

This is called perverse incentivization. You end up promoting the wrong behaviours.

Reminds me of an urban legend.

Legend has it that 1800s Delhi faced a cobra problem, so the British offered cash for dead cobras. The plan worked briefly and then backfired. People started farming cobras to claim the reward.

As I write this, Deepinder Goyal has declared that they received around 10000 applications so far. And they are processing those.

Good luck with that!

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