"BLINKIT WILL BE LARGER THAN ZOMATO"

Zomato Co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal on its business model, acquisitions, and more  

- KRISHNA GOPALAN

DEEPINDER GOYAL, 41, is a reticent person. Not known to give too many interviews, the Co-founder and CEO of food delivery platform Zomato meets Business Today on a cold afternoon at his sprawling Dera Mandi farmhouse in the capital. In the midst of lunch—soup and salmon ordered off Zomato—he speaks on what makes his company different, its acquisitions, and business model, among other things. Edited excerpts:

Why is the present moment so interesting for Zomato and its businesses? 

A lot has happened in the past leading to the present moment. People have got to leadership roles in 15 years, with many of them having [grown up]… in Zomato. It has led to the creation of the culture [of Zomato], and I don’t think they know any other way to work.

As a business, we are never comfortable. To put it bluntly, it is about always being in survival mode. We have been through so much to make us aware that everything is temporary. Normally, if the team is doing well, everyone would want to chill but that’s not how we go about it.

Zomato has always grown in spurts. If you had asked me five to six years ago, where I would be today, I would have had no answer. Even today, we probably have a 20% clue of where we will be two years from now and that’s because the environment changes so fast and we must also adapt. For instance, who thought Blinkit would have got here? Now, we suddenly have a lot more ideas on how we can expand further. At the time of buying it, it was more of an if; now is about when.