Man Who Applied To Zomato's Rs 20 lakh Chief Of Staff Role Reveals Why He Quit 16 Months Later

An entrepreneur has caught social media's attention after revealing how a Chief of Staff job posting by Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal reshaped his career path, leading him to quit a stable job in Toronto, help build what became LAT Aerospace, before leaving the job 16 months later to start his own venture. In a detailed post on X titled "I applied to Deepinder Goyal's Rs 20 lakh Chief of Staff post. Sixteen months later, I quit," Harshit Mulchandani detailed the chain of events that started after Goyal posted the job listing.

In November 2024, Goyal advertised for the role, highlighting that the selected candidate would not earn any money and instead would have to pay Rs 20 lakh for the chance to work alongside him.

The post led to heavy criticism, with many calling it exploitative or a publicity stunt. Mulchandani says he read it differently and knew immediately he wanted to apply. He wrote a plain 200-word account of his life which included losing his father at an early age, running the family textile business as a teenager and turning down a well-paying New York job over visa issues. He framed the Chief of Staff role not as a job but as access to a kind of learning he couldn't manufacture on his own.

He flew to India that December to surprise his mother, and ended up meeting Goyal at his farmhouse on Christmas Day. What he expected to be an interview turned into a nearly hour-long conversation about business and ambition.

"On December 25, 2024, I walked into Deepinder Goyal's farmhouse for what I thought would be a conversation about a Chief of Staff role at Zomato. An hour later, he offered me a job building something that did not yet have a company, a team or even a fixed idea. Two minutes after leaving his farmhouse, I sent in my resignation from my job in Toronto," he said.

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— harshit (@harshitmul) July 24, 2026

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That venture became LAT Aerospace. Mulchandani describes the early months as directionless, with the small team holding over 100 conversations with pilots, engineers and manufacturers just to figure out what they were building, repeatedly hitting dead ends and starting over. Mulchandani credited Goyal for pushing speed over polish,

Despite the growth the role gave him, Mulchandani eventually felt he wanted to build something of his own. Alongside his LAT work, he'd been experimenting with AI agents and voice tools. Convinced that conversational AI could reshape industries built on human coordination, he left the job.

"I kept telling myself that I should stay longer. There was more to learn, more responsibility to earn, and more certainty to accumulate before attempting something alone. All of those statements were true, which made them especially useful as excuses. If learning becomes the prerequisite for beginning, the beginning can be postponed indefinitely."