Foodtech unicorn Zomato has announced that it is extending 26 weeks of paid parental leave for men along with women working in Zomato across the world, Founder Deepinder Goyal said in a blogpost. And it is not just that: along with this, Zomato will also give an endowment of $1000 per child, to the new parents.





He added one core issue that leads to fewer women leaders in organisations, the community, and the nation is the lack of universal paid parental leave. And that currently it is hard for women to lead a healthy family life and focus on their careers, leading to a lot of women leaving their jobs or putting their careers on the back burner. This results in a pressing lack of diversity across all levels of the organisation, and needs to be solved proactively.





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"We have also always taken pride in building a culture of meritocracy – something which starts failing when it comes to equality between men and women at the workplace. This happens for various reasons – societal norms, precedents, and sometimes, even government policies," Deepinder said. He added that even if an organisation wants to focus on gender balance in the senior ranks within, it is almost impossible to do that because of the supply bias, and that a lot of that imbalance at the top stems from an unequal leave policy for men and women when they welcome their children to this world.





"Gandhi said – ’be the change you wish to see in the world’. Which is why we have made some changes to our parental leave policies today. For women across the globe (we have teams in 13 countries as we speak), we will be offering 26 weeks paid leave, or will follow the government mandated policy, whichever is more. We will be offering exactly the same benefits to men as well," announced Deepinder.





There won’t be even an iota of difference in parental leave policy for men and women at Zomato going forward, he added. This policy also applies to non birthing parents, and in cases of surrogacy, adoption, and same-sex partners.





These policy changes are applicable to even those Zomans who have had a child within the last 6 months, the blogpost added.