Building Zomato — the unfiltered version
With Deepinder Goyal · Hosted by Raj Shamani
Episode summary
Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal joins Figuring Out for an unusually candid conversation about the parts of building Zomato that didn't make the press releases — the near-bankruptcy in 2019, the controversial pivot into Blinkit, the public mistakes that became case studies, and what it actually feels like to take a 15-year-old company public on the Indian exchanges. Deepinder is unsparing about his own failures as a CEO in the early years, walks Raj through the internal logic of the Blinkit acquisition that the market initially hated, and explains why he believes quick commerce — not food delivery — is the business that will define Zomato's next decade. The episode also covers his hiring philosophy, why he thinks most Indian startups are over-managed and under-led, and what a typical day looks like for him now.
Key takeaways
- 1.Zomato came within weeks of running out of cash in 2019 — the recovery was driven entirely by ruthless cost discipline, not a magic product change.
- 2.Quick commerce (Blinkit) is a structurally better business than food delivery: higher AOV, better unit economics, denser delivery routes.
- 3.Most Indian startups confuse hiring senior people with hiring leaders — a senior title is not the same as the willingness to make unpopular calls.
- 4.Going public changes nothing about how you should run the company and everything about how you should communicate.
- 5.The biggest mistake Deepinder made as a young CEO was avoiding hard conversations — every avoided conversation became a much harder problem six months later.
Full transcript
Transcript edited lightly for readability. Timestamps refer to the YouTube video above.
Deepinder, thank you for doing this. Let's start with the moment people don't know about — 2019, how close was Zomato actually to going under?
Closer than I'll ever publicly admit on a press call, but for your podcast — weeks. Not months. Weeks. We had a path to zero and a board meeting where the honest answer to 'do we have a business' was 'maybe not.' What saved us wasn't a product breakthrough. It was cutting everything that wasn't core, having uncomfortable conversations with our largest cost centers, and a few investors who chose to believe one more time.
The Blinkit acquisition — the market hated it on day one. Walk me through the logic.
Food delivery is a hard business. The AOV is low, the customer is price-sensitive, the rider economics are brutal. Quick commerce has higher AOVs, denser routes, and the customer is buying necessities — which means the frequency is structural, not promotional. The market hated the acquisition because they were comparing it to food delivery margins. The right comparison was modern retail.
What's the biggest mistake you made as a younger CEO?
Avoiding hard conversations. With a co-founder, with a senior hire who wasn't working out, with an investor who needed to be told something they didn't want to hear. Every one of those conversations I delayed turned into a much bigger problem six months later. Now I have them on day one, even when I'd rather not.
What does a typical day look like for you now?
Boring. And that's the goal. The day a CEO's calendar is exciting is usually the day the company is in trouble.