Zerodha's Nithin Kamath's clarification after backlash over BMI challenge

Zerodha's Nithin Kamath clarified after receiving significant backlash on his BMI challenge.

A day after Zerodha founder Nithin Kamath’s half-month salary for under 25 Body Mass Index (BMI) initiative backfired on social media, the financial services company’s boss issued a clarification.

In a LinkedIn post, Kamath said he was sharing more context on the initiative that didn’t go down very well with many who pointed out this is an unhealthy way to promote body standards.

“We have experimented with a bunch of ideas since Covid and WFH to help the team think about their health. Sitting is the new smoking, and the idea has been to nudge everyone to move,” he said adding insight into a prior programme the company undertook.

“Last year we let everyone on the team set health goals and ran a lottery amongst those who met their goals for Rs 10lks. Was successful, but the participation wasn't broad-based. We ran online yoga sessions and made mental health counselors available for the team during lockdowns,” he continued.

Kamath said that as a company it is their onus to push everyone to think about their health and added that due to the coronavirus pandemic and work from home, health levels have dipped in the last two years. He added that the average age of the Zerodha team has gone up to 30.

“The plan has been to get everyone to a diagnostic center once a year to track health, but has been a challenge given WFH and most on our team aren’t in Metros. Instead of procrastinating, we thought a good way is to get started with something,” he added in his post.

“And this is just an added bonus over and above all other bonuses and incentives that everyone on the team earns. Just like that Rs 10lk prize pool for the lottery we ran last year to pick one person amongst everyone who met their health goals,” clarifying on the half-month salary incentive.

Also read: Zerodha employees now have an incentive to lose weight

Hours ago, Kamath had said measuring a person’s BMI is the easiest way to get started on the health and fitness journey. Employees with a BMI of less than 25 will get half a month's salary as bonus, Kamath said on LinkedIn and Twitter. Not just that, by August, if an employee manages to bring her or his BMI under 24, they will get another half month’s pay as bonus, he said, marking World Health Day.

The lowest average BMI or the largest change in average BMI wins. The winner chooses a charity everyone else contributes to. Maybe a health tech company can run the initiative.

If you want to do this at your company, do post in the comments.

Happy world health day! 2/3

— Nithin Kamath (@Nithin0dha) April 7, 2022

“I'm sure you mean well. This, though, is actually discrimination. Please rethink this after discussion with experts. Again, I'm sure you meant well,” tweeted one user.

“This is actually discrimination. I can still understand incentivising for doing certain no of steps, but this is going to lead to undue stress for those vying for that extra money, and more importantly those who may be body shamed for not fitting into the BMI standard,” said another.

“This is dangerous and inappropriate. Absolutely terrible to do in the workplace,” read another tweet.

Nithin Kamath and his older brother Nikhil Kamath, are the co-founders of Zerodha - India’s largest equity brokerage house. They were ranked 86th on the Forbes list of India’s richest in 2021. The Kamath brothers founded Zerodha in 2010.