Deepinder Goyal

He failed class 6 in a small Punjab town, then scanned a pile of takeaway menus at his consulting job and built the company that taught India to order food on an app.

01 / At a glance

Born: 26 January 1983, Muktsar, Punjab
Education: IIT Delhi, Integrated M.Tech, Mathematics & Computing (2005)
First job: Consultant at Bain & Company (about 3 years)
Founded: Foodiebay, July 2008 (renamed Zomato, November 2010)
Co-founder: Pankaj Chaddah
First outside money: Rs 4.7 crore (about $1M) from Info Edge, July 2010
IPO: 23 July 2021, issue price Rs 76
Company today: Eternal Ltd: Zomato, Blinkit, District, Hyperpure
Role now: Vice Chairman of Eternal (stepped down as CEO, 1 Feb 2026)
New bets: LAT Aerospace, Continue Research, Temple

01 · Jul 2008Foodiebay

The first version launches.

02 · Nov 2010Zomato

Foodiebay is renamed Zomato.

03 · 2011India

The service spreads across India.

04 · 2012Abroad

International expansion begins.

01 / Where he came from

Gurudwara Muktsar Sahib in Muktsar, Punjab, the town where Deepinder Goyal grew up — Credit: Jagmeet23 / Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY-SA 3.0.

Born on 26 January 1983 in Muktsar, a small town in Punjab.[1]
His father taught botany and his mother taught English. His older brother was the star student of the family.[2]
He was near the bottom of his class. His father had to ask the school to promote him in class 5, and he failed class 6.[5][2]
In class 8 a teacher handed out answers during an exam and he came first. "It gave me false confidence. Once you are on top, you don't want to go back to the 25th spot."[2]
He admits he once tried to get question papers from a man at a printing press in Muktsar.[3]
At DAV College, Chandigarh he failed class 11 with 39%. "In Muktsar, I was topping among 25 students. In Chandigarh, I had 500 other kids as good as me."[2][4]
A classmate there, Albinder Dhindsa, helped him study. Decades later Dhindsa would run Blinkit and then succeed him as Eternal's Group CEO.[5][22]
He studied properly for the first time, ranked 5th in class, and cleared IIT-JEE on his first try. "When I wrote the exam, I had nothing to lose."[4][2]
"That gave me some confidence that I can do something if I want to. Life has been a treadmill ever since."[4]

02 / Paying the bills and the bad years

Main building of IIT Delhi — Credit: TheVyomanaut / Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY-SA 4.0.

At IIT Delhi he felt out of his depth and has spoken openly about going through depression there.[5][3]
In 2005 he tried a food-ordering business outside the IIT Delhi gates. It failed.[3]
He graduated in 2005 with an Integrated M.Tech in Mathematics & Computing, and met his future wife Kanchan Joshi on campus. They married in 2007.[6][2]
He joined Bain & Company as a consultant and stayed about three years. That salary paid the rent while his side project grew.[6][8]
The first money for the side project came from family and friends. Seed investors were hard to find.[8]
He kept the risk small by knowing his number: "You need Rs 20,000 a month to survive... I can make that money anytime."[2]
He did not quit Bain until November 2009, more than a year after launch. "If it wasn't for Zomato, I would still be at Bain."[9][2]

03 / How Zomato started

Credit: Zomato (logo) / Wikimedia Commons. License: Public domain.

At Bain, colleagues queued in the cafeteria to look through a stack of takeaway menus. Goyal scanned the menus and put them on the office intranet.[7]
That idea became Foodiebay, launched on 10 July 2008 with fellow Bain consultant Pankaj Chaddah.[10]
The two kept their jobs for about a year and a half and built the site on weekends.[8]
By July 2008 it had menus for 1,200 restaurants in Delhi NCR, and 2,000 by the end of the year. It was live in four cities before they quit.[8]
In November 2010 it was renamed Zomato, a play on "tomato" that also avoided any confusion with eBay.[10][8]
Info Edge founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani found Goyal's email through the site's domain registration and wrote to him cold.[9]
Goyal replied within 24 hours. They met within 48 and shook hands within 72. Rs 4.7 crore (about $1M) arrived on 22 July 2010.[9]

04 / Money and growth

A Zomato delivery partner riding a Yulu electric bike in Bengaluru — Credit: SerChevalerie / Wikimedia Commons. License: CC0.

Info Edge kept writing cheques: about $16.7M between 2010 and 2013, for a 57.9% stake.[11]
Zomato spread across India in 2011 and abroad from 2012. By 2015 it was in more than 20 countries.[10]
In 2014 and 2015 it raised more than $170M from investors including Sequoia, Vy Capital and Temasek.[11]
In January 2015 it bought Seattle's Urbanspoon, reported at $52M, to enter the US and Australia.[10][2]
Delivery started in March 2015 using partners like Runnr. Zomato bought Runnr in 2017 and switched to its own fleet.[10]
In February 2018 Alibaba's Ant Financial invested at a $1.1B valuation, making Zomato a unicorn. Reports put the cheque at $150M to $200M.[12][27]
In January 2020 it bought Uber Eats' India business in an all-stock deal. Uber got 9.99% of Zomato.[10]

05 / The hard years

Urbanspoon was shut in June 2015, five months after the deal.[10]
In October 2015 Zomato laid off 300 people, about 10% of staff, as it moved away from collecting restaurant data by hand.[13]
Data leaks hit in 2015 (62.5 million users) and 2017 (17 million records).[10]
In May 2020 COVID cut order volumes sharply. Zomato let go 13% of its roughly 4,000 staff and cut pay by up to 50% for many others.[14][15]
Those let go got half pay for six months and kept their laptops. Goyal wrote: "There's no going back to the 'normal'."[14][15]
In November 2021 it pulled out of every country except India and the UAE. Its intercity service Legends, launched in 2022, was shut two years later.[10]
How he copes: "There are times when s*** hits the fans. But I sleep through these phases."[2]

06 / IPO, Blinkit and the first profit

A Blinkit dark store warehouse in Hitech City, Hyderabad — Credit: Syced / Wikimedia Commons. License: CC0.

In July 2021 Zomato raised Rs 9,375 crore in its IPO at Rs 76 a share. The issue was subscribed about 38 times.[16][17]
It listed on 23 July 2021 at around Rs 115 and crossed Rs 1 lakh crore in market value on day one, while still losing money.[16]
Goyal's tweet that day: "Never been so excited and indifferent at the same time."[17]
In his letter to investors: "I don't know whether we will succeed or fail – we will surely, like always, give it our best."[16]
In June 2022 it completed the $568M purchase of quick-commerce company Blinkit, run by his old classmate Dhindsa.[11][5]
On 27 July 2022 the stock hit a record low of about Rs 40, below its IPO price, after a share lock-in ended.[18]
In August 2023 Zomato reported its first-ever net profit: Rs 2 crore for the April-June quarter.[19]
In 2024 it bought Paytm's ticketing business for $244.2M and launched the District app. In February 2025 the parent was renamed Eternal.[11]
In FY25 Eternal earned Rs 527 crore on revenue of Rs 20,243 crore. By July 2025 Blinkit had overtaken food delivery in transaction value.[11]

07 / Stepping back

Eternal Limited headquarters building in Gurgaon — Credit: Uttsaav / Wikimedia Commons. License: CC0.

In 2025 he co-founded LAT Aerospace with former Zomato executive Surobhi Das.[23]
In October 2025 he put $25M of his own money into Continue Research, a longevity science effort.[24][26]
He also backs Temple, a wearable that tracks blood flow to the brain, linked to his theory that gravity plays a role in ageing.[25]
He stepped down as CEO and MD from 1 February 2026 and became Vice Chairman. Dhindsa became Group CEO.[21][22]
From his letter: "I have spent eighteen years, almost half my life, building this company." He said he was drawn to ideas involving "significantly higher-risk exploration".[21]

08 / The good and the bad

Two Zomato delivery partners on electric scooters — Credit: Eternal Ltd official brand photo / eternal.com. License: Editorial use only (Eternal brand resources terms).

Good: he gave about Rs 700 crore from his share options to the Zomato Future Foundation to pay for the education of delivery partners' children.[20]
Good: Zomato's nonprofit arm Feeding India said in May 2022 it was serving over 200,000 meals a day.[10]
Bad: treating delivery workers as contractors, not employees, remains a public fight. Hundreds of Blinkit workers struck in Delhi NCR in 2023.[11]
Bad: in March 2024 a "Pure Veg" fleet in green uniforms drew heavy backlash. He dropped the green uniforms within 24 hours.[11]
Bad: many big bets failed, from Urbanspoon to most of the overseas markets to Legends.[10]

09 / What he built

A Blinkit delivery bike parked in Hitech City, Hyderabad — Credit: Syced / Wikimedia Commons. License: CC0.

Zomato delivered food in more than 800 Indian cities as of 2023.[10]
Eternal now runs four businesses: Zomato (food), Blinkit (10-minute groceries), Hyperpure (supplies for restaurants) and District (events and tickets).[11]
It was among the first Indian tech startups to go public, and the first digital-native company in the BSE Sensex.[26]
He has invested in and mentored more than 25 startups, according to his own announcement.[26]

Lessons

Keep the job until the idea proves itself. Foodiebay was built on weekends for more than a year while Bain paid the bills.
Know your survival number. Once he knew he needed about Rs 20,000 a month, quitting felt like a small risk.
Answer fast. A cold email answered in 24 hours became a Rs 4.7 crore cheque within weeks.
Shut down what isn't working. Urbanspoon, most overseas markets and Legends were all closed instead of being kept alive.
A bad report card is not a verdict. He failed class 6 and class 11 and still ranked in IIT-JEE once he actually studied.

Key sources

Watch

Deepinder Goyal: Zomato, 10-Min Delivery, Founder Mindset & Business In India | FO453 Raj Shamani
Raj Shamani
Long 2026 conversation on building Zomato and Blinkit, mostly in Hindi.
Watch on YouTube
Deepinder Goyal Talks About His Zomato Journey At UnPluggd 2015
The Ashish Sinha Show
He tells the early story himself: Foodlet, Foodiebay, the eBay legal notice, renaming to Zomato.
Watch on YouTube
Zomato's Secret to Dominating the Food Delivery Market | Deepinder Goyal | YourStory
YourStory
YourStory interview with Goyal on Zomato and food delivery.
Watch on YouTube
India’s Quick-Commerce Architect Takes Long Bet on the Future
Bloomberg Television
Bloomberg Television interview with Goyal on quick commerce.
Watch on YouTube