Losing Weight Leads To Minting Bonus At Zerodha

Online broking start-up Zerodha co-founder and CEO Nithin Kamath announced on Thursday that his firm is running a "fun health program" to encourage employees to remain healthy. As part of this program, Zerodha employees will get bonuses for losing weight. 

In a series of tweets, Kamath, who himself is a fitness freak, said that at Zerodha who has a body mass index (BMI) of less than 25 will get half a month's pay as a bonus.

The Zerodha CEO added that the average BMI of his employees is 25.3. Posting a challenge for his staff, he further said that if his employees can manage to bring down the average BMI to below 24 by August then everyone at the company will get another half a month's salary as a bonus. "It would be fun to compete with other companies," he said.

"We are running a fun health program at @zerodhaonline.  Anyone on our team with BMI

In another tweet, Kamath further expanded on the rules of this challenge. He noted that the lowest average BMI or the largest change in average BMI wins. 

Kamath wrote that the winner will get to choose a charity everyone else will contribute to. He added that maybe a health tech company could run this initiative. 

"If you want to do this at your company, do post in the comments," wrote Kamath. He also wished everyone a "Happy world health day1".

In the last tweet of the thread, Kamath added that he knows that BMI isn't the best measure to track health and fitness, but it is the easiest way to get started. 

"With health & most other things in life, the most important bit is to get started," he wrote.

Kamath also advised his followers that if they are looking to become healthy then walking 10,000 steps daily is a great start.