Zomato founder and Eternal Vice Chairman, Deepinder Goyal, is hiring for his health-tech startup, Temple, albeit with a little twist. In a social media post on Friday (Feb 27), Goyal announced he was recruiting for various engineering roles, ranging from machine learning to neural decoding researchers, but highlighted that applicants with less than 16 per cent body fat for men and 26 per cent for women were only eligible to apply.
Goyal said he was assembling the engineering team for his wearable device, called Temple, currently in the research prototype phase. He has previously described it as an “experimental device to measure brain flow precisely, in real time, and continuously”.
“We’re recruiting at @temple,” wrote Goyal in an X (formerly Twitter) post, adding: “At Temple, we are building the ultimate wearable for elite performance athletes. A device that measures what no other wearable in the world measures, with a level of precision that doesn’t exist yet.”
Goyal said his startup was on the lookout for people obsessed about both the ‘craft and category’. He added that the ideal candidates were engineers who were also athletes willing to test the product until it was perfected.
“We are building for people who push their bodies to the edge. We want to be those people, not just serve them. So only people who take fitness seriously, and have body fat <16 per cent (men) and 26 per cent (women) should apply,” said Goyal.
Goyal also announced that applicants who currently do not fit the criteria but were willing to reach the desired body mass in three months could apply for the role. However, they would remain on probation until they hit the physical targets.
‘Body Fat Criteria Before GTA 6’
As the recruitment ad went viral, social media users were amused by the hiring criteria, with some lauding its boldness, while others remained apprehensive of the idea.
“I don’t think there exists an Embedded Systems Engineer with less than 16 per cent body fat tbh,” said one user, while another added: “We really got body fat as a hiring criteria before GTA 6.”
A third commented: “Big vision. I like the obsession with quality and performance. Just one honest thought, hiring based on body fat percentage may not be the best filter. Some great engineers who love fitness and train seriously may not fit that number, but they can still build amazing products.”
What Is Temple?
According to Goyal, the idea for Temple emerged from his long-running personal experiments with health optimisation. Over the years, this included tracking blood markers, fasting, meditation, hyperbaric chamber routines, supplements, and other longevity-focused practices.
Temple, according to him, is the tool designed to test whether long-term changes in brain blood flow could be a meaningful upstream driver or accelerator of ageing.