Shantanu Deshpande, the founder of the Bombay Shaving Co, says he’s not going to post any more messages on LinkedIn following the furious response to advice he gave young employees to work 18-hour days to get ahead in their careers.

“Yikes, so much hate,” wrote Deshpande in what he said was his final LinkedIn post after his earlier one prompted a storm of abuse.

Deshpande, whose popular men’s grooming company was mocked on social media as the “Bombay Slaving Co.", said he had been the target of so much social media vitriol he would never post again on the professional networking site.

The Bombay Shaving chief executive triggered the anger by saying on LinkedIn, “When you are 22 and new in your job, throw yourself into it. Eat well and stay fit, but put in the 18-hour days for at least 4-5 years” and quit “rona-dhona (cribbing)... Worship your work.”

Deshpande, who’s 35, argued that the time employees spend working during the first five years of their professional lives “carries (them) for the rest” of their careers.

When young people are setting out on their careers, it’s “too early” for them to start looking for work-life balance,” he said.

The CEO’s advice clearly touched a raw nerve in this country, where competition for jobs is intense and employees regularly report feeling burnt out.

”People like you are why workers are quitting in droves. You and your business deserve to crash and burn," one LinkedIn user replied. “This way u will surely shine like a star in not more than a week's time & people will say RIP,” another LinkedIn user mockingly responded.

Deshpande said in an interview later with ET Now that his advice to work 18-hour days was not meant to be taken literally. He added he should have expressed his views using “more nuance.”

“I did not mean to put in 18 hours every day. My exaggeration to make a point was taken out of context. I just meant to give it my all,” he said.

But Deshpande, who launched his company six years ago and has built it into one of India’s top brands, said he firmly believed that “people who put in hard work and are gritty do very well in life.”

“Between 22 and 27 is that window when you’re at your maximum energy and can give it your all.” After that, family and other responsibilities start being a drain on employees’ time, he said.

Deshpande’s statements happened to coincide with a new McKinsey management consulting study that found four-out-of-10 Indian workers suffering from high levels of burnout, distress, anxiety, and depression.

Toxic workplace behaviour was the biggest contributing factor. “Employers in India face a substantial problem” to address burnout and mental health, McKinsey said.

Deshpande, who’s an Indian Institute of Management graduate, emphasised that he believed in creating good workspaces and that of the 10 people with him when he launched his company, at least seven were still with him.

Still, the hostile reaction to his post dismayed Deshpande. “To those who were hurt by (my message) most – apologies,” he said. “To those who sent nasty ‘your son is a slave owner’ messages to my parents and thousands like those - You won.”

Deshpande's comments were at odds with new global workplace trends like “quiet quitting,” doing the bare minimum at work, and China’s “lying flat” movement – abandoning careers to embrace lifestyles offering free time – that have taken off on social media.

In 2020, after the pandemic struck, Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy faced similar flack for urging Indians to work at least 64 hours a week for two-to-three years to compensate for the economic slowdown caused by the Covid-19 lockdown.