Deepinder Goyal on Founder Culture

A workplace frustration seeded the venture. As a Bain & Company consultant in 2007, Deepinder Goyal noticed colleagues repeatedly lining up at a shared notice board to read printed restaurant menus before ordering lunch. He and fellow Bain analyst Pankaj Chaddah digitised those menus into a website called FoodieBay in 2008, sidestepping the engineering-hero narrative that surrounds most Indian startup origin stories.

The founders quit their consulting jobs in November 2009 to run FoodieBay full-time, then in November 2010 renamed it Zomato — partly because they were unsure they would stay only in food, and partly to avoid a trademark clash with eBay. The pivot to a more abstract brand marked the first of several identity refreshes that would culminate in the 2025 rebrand to Eternal Ltd.

Goyal publicly disclosed that he twice considered asking Blinkit founder Albinder Dhindsa to step aside post-acquisition, citing potential conflict-of-interest concerns. The admission — rare in Indian startup governance — illustrated the awkwardness of integrating a founder-CEO into a larger acquiring company, and informed Goyal's eventual decision to elevate Dhindsa to group CEO in 2026.

After stepping down as Eternal CEO, Goyal has begun preparing Temple — a forehead-worn wellness device measuring the body's metabolic state in real time, priced around a thousand dollars and targeted at athletes, founders and executives. The device marks Goyal's first major venture outside the food delivery orbit and a pivot toward deep-tech health hardware.

Goyal announced in January 2026 that he would step down as CEO and Managing Director of Eternal from 1 February, handing the role to Blinkit founder Albinder Dhindsa while remaining vice chairman for long-term strategy and governance. He described the move as a 'change in title, not in commitment,' signalling a founder-led succession choreography that recalled the Bansals' post-Walmart handoff.

Forbes estimated Goyal's net worth at roughly 1.4 billion dollars as of mid-2026, mostly tied to his Eternal stake. He has since signalled appetite for a second act outside food delivery, including a forehead-worn metabolic-monitoring wearable called Temple priced at about a thousand dollars — an early-stage health-tech bet rather than a fully commercialised venture.

Zomato was incorporated on 18 January 2010 as DC Foodiebay Online Services, having started life informally on 10 July 2008 as a restaurant-listing site run by two Bain consultants. The founders — Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah — moved from menu digitisation to ratings, photos and reviews, building the aggregator playbook that competitors would later copy across emerging markets.