Zomato Founder Deepinder Goyal's Temple Startup Seeks Engineers Who Bench as Hard as They Code
Deepinder Goyal, the founder of Zomato and Eternal Vice Chairman, is assembling an elite engineering team for his health-tech venture, Temple, with a groundbreaking hiring criterion: candidates must meet strict body fat percentages to qualify. In a recent post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Goyal announced multiple deep-tech roles but emphasized that technical prowess alone is insufficient for consideration.
Fitness Thresholds and Probation Periods for New Hires
Goyal specified that only male applicants with body fat under 16% and female applicants under 26% should apply initially. However, he offered a probationary pathway for those who do not yet meet these fitness benchmarks. Such candidates can still join the team but will remain on probation until they achieve the required body fat levels within a strict three-month timeframe.
"We are building for people who push their bodies to the edge. We want to be those people, not just serve them," Goyal wrote, highlighting the startup's philosophy of embodying the athletic excellence it aims to support through its products.
Deep-Tech Roles and Product Management Expectations
The available positions at Temple span a range of specialized engineering fields, reflecting the startup's focus on advanced health monitoring technology. The roles include:
- Analog Systems Engineers
- Embedded Systems Engineers
- Computational Neuroscientists
- BCI (Brain-Computer Interface) Engineers
- Neural Decoding Researchers
- Computer Vision Engineers
- Neuroimaging ML Engineers
Additionally, Goyal is seeking product managers capable of working independently through Figma without requiring constant designer assistance, underscoring a demand for versatile and self-sufficient talent in the fast-paced startup environment.
Temple: The Ultimate Wearable for Elite Athletes
Goyal described Temple as "the ultimate wearable for elite performance athletes," designed to measure metrics that no current wearable device tracks, with an unprecedented level of precision. He envisions the ideal hires as "engineers who are also athletes" who will personally use and rigorously test the products they develop, striving for perfection through continuous iteration.
The Temple device itself is a small, metallic clip-like wearable that positions near the temple on the forehead. Goyal has been seen wearing it publicly, including during podcast appearances earlier this year. He has previously explained that it functions as an experimental tool to measure real-time, continuous brain blood flow, emerging from his personal research into health optimization and a theory he calls the "Gravity Ageing Hypothesis." Currently, the device remains in the research prototype phase.
Social Media Reactions and Broader Implications
The hiring announcement quickly went viral, sparking a mix of admiration and skepticism across social media platforms. One user humorously noted, "I don't think there exists an Embedded Systems Engineer with less than 16% body fat tbh," while another quipped, "We really got body fat as a hiring criteria before GTA 6."
Some commentators offered more nuanced perspectives, suggesting that while fitness is valuable, rigid body fat percentages might exclude talented engineers who possess the right mindset and dedication to health. "Hiring based on body fat % may not be the best filter," one person remarked. "Some great engineers who love fitness and train seriously may not fit that number, but they can still build amazing products."
This unique approach by Goyal and Temple raises questions about the intersection of health, technology, and workplace culture in the burgeoning health-tech sector, potentially setting a new precedent for how startups prioritize holistic well-being in their recruitment strategies.
