Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal: Culture is the operating system of any organisation

Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal

At just over 150 pages, CULTure at Zomato: How to Rewire Your Brain for Greatness by Deepinder Goyal, with Ashish Goel and Naina Sahni, is a quick read. Illustrations and large pull-quotes take up nearly half of the pages; but the book is well-designed - the brand colours and aesthetic of the Zomato ads is in evidence here too.

Juggernaut; 152 page; Rs499.

To be sure, CULTure at Zomato started out as an internal handbook for employees, with section heads like 'Our Vision Statement', 'Welcome to Zomato', and 'Our ethical expectations from you' (viz Zomato employee). The idea for it was conceived when Juggernaut Books publisher Chiki Sarkar saw a 'ring-bound dummy book' on Goyal's desk (Sarkar recounts the story in the preface to the book).

Having said that, the book could be of interest to those interested in work culture in Indian startups in general, and in Zomato specifically - as an Indian startup, as a funded startup, as a food startup that pivoted sharply from its original idea to be an online directory of menus, and as one of the earliest Indian unicorns to list on bourses.

In an email interview, Zomato CEO and author Deepinder Goyal shared his take on culture, his 'growth comes from discomfort' principle, why there's a 'Screw Hierarchy' poster in Zomato offices, whether Zomato transfers the full tip amount to delivery partners, and why he invites employees to share bad news with him.

What does work culture mean to you?

It means everything to me. One of my favourite quotes is “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. I believe culture is the operating system of any organisation, and I’m convinced that all of Zomato’s successes–and failures–are rooted in our culture. An organisation with the right culture needs a lot less planning and oversight. The right culture lets people figure out what to do without anyone having to tell them what to do.

Could you talk us through some of its key components?

Read the book to find out! Jokes aside, our culture is about creating an environment for employees to thrive, but that environment can’t be so comfortable that everyone goes into autopilot mode. I try to discourage that by living and breathing by two principles, i.e. “Only the paranoid survive” and “All growth comes from discomfort”. For the organisation to embody these two principles, it's imperative that every employee adopts a founder mindset. Think of the magic that can be created when every single employee takes ownership, and has skin in the game by acting like a founder. There’s a massive poster screaming “Screw Hierarchy” in all our offices. I want our employees to experiment, take risks, but not feel like failures if something goes wrong. I also say “you can leave Zomato, but Zomato never leaves you.” It's okay if they make mistakes. We always have their backs.

Could you talk a bit about the purpose of this book, and who should read it?

This book was originally an internal handbook meant for new and current employees. It contains a bit of Zomato’s history, our cultural principles and some of our most important employee policies. It is meant as a ready reckoner to keep on one’s desk and refer to often. Many of the principles in the book are my own daily reminders on how to operate.

What can someone outside Zomato hope to gain from it?

Anyone working for a company or an organisation will find the ideas in the book useful. Even if they take just one idea from the book, but truly make it a part of how they live and work, their purchase will be worth it.

So much happened during Covid and then with us going public, that I felt it was time to remind people about our cultural tenets.

One of the cultural principles in the book is to embrace bad news. I believe knowing what is wrong with our business is the starting point of improvement and greatness. ​​To institutionalise this, I periodically invite people across the company to directly share bad news with me. They can do this in person, via e-mail or Slack or even an anonymous online form.

At the same time, there are many cultural aspects where we still have work to do. The book is both about what our culture is and what I want our culture to be. We are all works in progress. As we often say at Zomato, “No matter how far we come, we are always only 1% done”.

What inspired the writing and publishing of this book?

This book was meant to be an internal employee handbook. Over the years I’ve noticed that each time our organisation hits an inflection point – when it grows and evolves, the culture starts to break. So much happened during Covid and then with us going public, that I felt it was time to remind people about our cultural tenets. We did several things to achieve this. For example, along with our marketing team, I created 36 bold posters to help boost our cultural behaviours. We started weekly culture stories on Slack. This handbook was another initiative in the same vein.

A chance meeting with Chiki, the editor of Juggernaut and her suggestion to make this publicly available led to the publishing of the book.

Could you give an example of how your work culture comes into play across the different types of employees at Zomato, from gig workers to full-time employees?

For any employee, culture comes into play in how they work with others, approach their personal growth, take accountability for their actions, and respond to an uncertain situation. A cultural trait will often show up in the stories people tell about someone. A couple of days ago, someone shared with me a note from a restaurant owner on a private WhatsApp group appreciating their sales PoC. It showed me how this PoC operated with a spirit of service towards the restaurants they work with. Moments like this, make everything we put in, completely worth it.

For our delivery partners, before culture, what matters is care. Our business relies on over 3 lakh partners voluntarily signing up to deliver orders. We need to care about their needs–flexible work slots, on-time payments that go straight to their bank accounts on a weekly basis, etc. We recently started an initiative to install shelters (rest points) where delivery partners can access drinking water or charge their phones. I’d like to also use this opportunity to categorically deny something I read very often, and that is Zomato doesn’t transfer the full tip to delivery partners, and cuts a part of it. This is absolutely false. Whatever amount delivery partners get in tips, 100 percent of it is transferred to their accounts directly. If our delivery partners feel cared for, the culture will follow.

Would you say Indian start-ups by and large have poor work culture, with long hours, punishing deadlines, not giving employees credit?

I can’t comment on the work culture of other Indian start-ups.

Could you tell us about the design of the book: what was the thought process there?

Most principles in the book are really about changing one’s mindset about how they operate. It takes time to first truly understand any mindset and then embody it. You have to keep going back to it. I want readers to keep this book on their desk and read it often. Thus it has to be inviting and engaging – delightful to open and thought-provoking to read. The design of the book – the graphic design and the illustrations – serves this purpose.