Zomato Lebanon To Implement 26-Week Paid Paternal Leave Policy

Great news! Zomato Lebanon is officially joining the league of companies that are implementing progressive universal parental leave policies on a local scale.

The restaurants, reviews, and food delivery platform Zomato has recently announced a new parental leave policy across all of its offices worldwide, which offers BOTH parents a minimum of 26 weeks of paid leave (6.5 months). It is also set to include non-birthing parents, such as those involving cases of surrogacy or adoption.

In addition to paid leave, new parents will be given an endowment of $1,000 per child to help them support their new baby. All employees who birthed a child six months prior to this policy change will also enjoy the new benefits.

This amazing new initiative positions Zomato among the very few companies in the world to offer such a unified parental policy. Aside from attempting to break down barriers that have traditionally existed for female leadership, the new policy is also intended to ensure that men have a greater role in child-rearing, particularly in the early stages of a child’s development.

“The lack of universal paid parental leave currently makes it complicated for many parents to effectively lead a healthy family life, and focus on their careers at the same time,” said Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO of Zomato. “It takes a village to raise a child. And while a village is ideal, a world where both parents are allowed to assume equal responsibility is a fair start.”

With Diageo Lebanon becoming the first local company to implement universal parental policies and Zomato following suit, we hope this encourages more companies to institutionalize similar paid parental leave policies.