Food-Techie At Zomato

Deepinder Goyal's strategy of investing in super brands such as Blinkit, as opposed to creating SuperApps, has reaped rich dividends.

- Nidhi Singal

WHAT STARTED as a modest concept, “Foodiebay”, in July 2008, aimed at solving the lunchtime dilemma of finding restaurant menus, has since transformed into Zomato (renamed in November 2010 to avoid any possible conflict with eBay), India’s leading food and grocery delivery platform. The man behind the transformation is Deepinder Goyal, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. At the time, Goyal was a senior associate consultant at Bain & Company. Recognising the potential of the online platform he had developed, Goyal made the bold decision to leave his corporate career and dedicate himself full-time to Zomato. The company has since innovated with products and strategic acquisitions, achieving unicorn status in 2018 and going public in 2021, cementing its position as a leading force in the food-tech industry.

As India embraced the smartphone culture with the advent of Android phones in 2008, soon Goyal’s platform, accessible on mobile browsers, offered a convenient solution for consumers seeking to discover restaurants and browse their menus. This made it easy for people to choose a restaurant before visiting or waiting at the establishment. In less than two years (November 2020), Goyal announced in a blog post that the platform had garnered 2 million customers and 8,000 restaurants. However, it wasn’t until 2015, a year after rival Swiggy pivoted into food delivery that Zomato ventured into this domain, a service it is now known for. At that time, India’s trust in e-commerce was still nascent, with even Amazon entering only in June 2013. The idea of ordering food online was unfamiliar to many, and building trust in this new service required time and effort.