As of today, more than 20% Zomato employees either have COVID-19, or are caring for a COVID-19 patient in their household. Over this past year, we have all been fighting many battles – personal and professional, while trying to serve our community, as best as we can.

For now, everybody’s focus is on getting past this second wave of COVID, as it rightly should be. But that does not mean that everything else that needs to change in the world takes a backseat.

At Zomato we’ve been working on multiple fronts to strengthen our own long-standing commitment to making our company more inclusive and diverse for years. Be it through initiatives such as an equal parental leave policy for – men, women, same-sex, surrogate or adoptive parents; or period/menstruation leaves. Or just leveling the playing field for younger professionals from diverse educational backgrounds, to have a seat at the tables that matter the most in the organisation.

And up until now, we had a largely investor run board. But today, I’m elated to share that we have five independent members on our board of eight people, four of whom are women.

More than gender diversity though, what we have always been gunning for is cognitive diversity across levels in our organisation. Evidence based research shows that a key prerequisite for innovation comes from cognitively diverse people.

On that note, having gender diversity on our board was a baseline, not a north star. Today, it makes me truly happy to share that each of our board members come from different occupational backgrounds bringing diverse cognitive skills and perspectives to the table.

A number of companies start with a diverse employee base at the entry-level, but it reduces significantly over time, and at senior levels. We decided to turn the paradigm on its head by introducing diversity with our Board of Directors. We’re hoping this is another small step towards building a truly lasting organizational culture where everybody belongs. And everybody thrives.

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Thanks Sutapa for pushing me, and helping me write this post.