I started Zomato as a college project. I had no idea what business meant. I didn't know what revenue meant. I didn't know the importance of anything like culture, people being kind to people. I was just doing whatever felt right.
One of India's most influential tech entrepreneurs. Entrepreneur of the year is Deepinder Goyal! And among the country's youngest self-made billionaires, Deepinder Goyal scaled his college startup into a multi-billion dollar platform, making the ten minute delivery part of everyday life in India.
But just as it looked like he had arrived, Goyal took a step away from the company he built for close to 20 years to chase after brain trackers, peak biology and flying shuttles.
I've always been curious about how does this work, how does that work? And just the rabbit hole has led me to solve all the problems that I want to solve, or all the businesses that I want to build.
Now, the architect of quick commerce in India is building for a much longer horizon. The question is, will he ever get there?
More than 7 acres of hidden luxury right here in Delhi... and it's the private residence of Deepinder Goyal. Few cameras have made it in so far. For a rare look inside, come with me.
When I was in college, I actually wanted to order food and I couldn't find a menu to order food. I just thought, let me put some of the menus online for myself and for friends. And for everybody else in the college. It failed miserably. It was back in 2005. Just way too early for any such thing.
And then I joined Bain. While I was at Bain, I sort of realized that what I was trying to do was complex. I need to make it simpler and then do this again.
When did you realize it could be that billion idea? I mean, you quit a stable, comfortable job at Bain to pursue the idea of FoodieBay.
So I actually started pursuing the idea of full time when I got a couple of advertiser calls. So restaurants who wanted to advertise. So we started making some money. A little bit like, let's say $3,000 a month. And that was more than what I was getting paid. I never thought I would be ever making more money than that doing this. But the journey wasn't that easy.
I mean, you came close to broke on more than one occasion because you were looking for scale and you risked collapsing.
So I started off as broke. So it wasn't so bad. So it wasn't so bad. Even if like five years down the line, you're actually staring at being broke. But see, building a company, building a startup has its ups and downs. And, um, it's not like I've come from a business family. It's not that I've had a mentor. It's like I had to figure out...
Your parents were teachers.
Yes. And, uh, I just had to figure things out on my own.
You were so relentless. You acquired Uber Eats India, you bought over, Blinkit at almost $600 million, amidst all the naysayers saying that it was a mistake, it was too soon for you to be doing that. What was the conviction that drove you to make all the moves when others were saying it was not the right thing to do?
How I thought of it is that if we don't do this, we are going to die. We just thought of this that if some other company takes this space, it's going to be so easy for them to move into food. That food will not be there for us anymore. Right. So we were sort of defending Zomato when we bought Blinkit.
But the market spoke when you bought Blinkit, your shares tanked. People didn't like it. So what?
I mean, we had to do what we had to do, right? I mean, either we faced this right now or we face an inevitable death three years from now.
Has the model proven itself? Wasn't too long ago that people thought it was a money pit. But now you're seeing a lot of competition. A lot of players in that space. Obviously people see the potential.
So quick commerce is not the same everywhere. Okay, so every single company has a different strategy, although on the face of it it might look like they're doing the same thing. Your competitors like Swiggy, Zepto. They're all different companies. The quick commerce models under the hood are actually different. So Blinkit is the only company which is actually profitable. It's got everything to do with the hundred choices put together that Blinkit makes, than everybody else.
Indians love speed. You talk about groceries in ten minutes, but that convenience has come at a cost. We've seen how some riders have lost their lives, seen protests as a result of that intervention from the government as well. How do you see the tension between the need for speed and safety for riders?
See, quick commerce solved this certain problem for the users or for the market. Right. And every solution to an existing problem leads to new kind of problems. It's always been the case. So we're working on these things, and I'm sure we will iron all of these things out in due course of time.
How much responsibility accountability do you think companies should bear? I mean, people have pointed to perhaps silent pressures from algorithms, penalties, incentives. How do you assess it?
I mean, I don't think that our algorithms push anybody for speed because we don't even give a timer to our riders that this is the amount of time or this is the time we promised to the user. Even if we just gave them a fixed fee per hour. Like, a lot of them would still be driving fast because then they would want a break and then they would have more free time. So I think we have to look at all these problems in a more holistic way and see what needs to be done in order to solve these things. And some of these problems, I think, are not even solvable.
I mean, for example, in India, everybody breaks traffic rules, okay. Everybody does. And uh, our riders wear a uniform. So therefore you can easily spot them breaking traffic rules. But if somebody is not wearing a uniform you don't see them. You don't notice them breaking traffic rules because there's nobody to blame. I think there's a lot of psychology, a lot of perception, like going on behind the scenes.
Blinkit has removed the ten-minute promise.
Yes, but see, the speed of delivery doesn't come from anybody driving fast. So the speed comes from the density of the stores, and every store is up to a kilometre away from you, kilometre and a half away from where you are right now. Ultra fast deliveries are here to stay, but I think the ten minute delivery advertising promise sort of goes away and we just do what we can, right? So without pushing our riders, because that's not the design of the business anyway. I mean, pushing people to do something faster is a bad business, right? So that doesn't work.
In February 2026, a report by a little-known research firm cited food delivery services as one specific area which will see disruption by AI agents. Indian IT stocks, including Eternal's, dropped the day after its release. It took months for the company's stock to recover.
How are you positioning amidst AI?
We have physical infrastructure and we've got so many things, there are almost 800 APIs to be hooked on to the app, to be able to pull that off and the amount of work that it takes for those AI companies to integrate with us is going to be a lot of work, and a chat interface really can't do everything that a dedicated app can do. Not yet. But that also doesn't mean that we will be sitting idle and letting those companies take over. So whatever interfaces, those chat interfaces will... Even we can build those things, and we can tailor them way more nicely and better to our use cases than anybody else can.
The other big thing is, we miss the whole nuance of the power of the brand, right?
Not brand loyalty. Recall, brand recall. Right. So every time you think of, oh, I want to do this, a certain brand comes to your mind. That is one of the reasons why we have separate brands. We don't have a super app, right? Because like Zomato is food ordering, Blinkit is grocery and e-commerce and District is something else. So that's a deliberate strategy that we follow to make sure that use case to brand recall stays like super close to each other.
So does your strategy remain the same despite the influx of AI, despite the potential of AI disrupting you.
I think AI's disruption is a possible myth for us, and we function the best when there's a threat. I mean, it's survival, right? So I think we'll make it.
You have stepped away from the role of CEO of the company. Why is that important?
Eternal is what we named the company as two years ago. And, um, for our company to become that, it has to grow beyond one single person. And I'm not saying that I permanently left. Right. So it's sort of an experiment for us as an organization as well that, can this organization sustain and grow even when I'm not there day-to-day?
Up next on Latitude: from minutes to decades, a look at what's after Eternal for Deepinder Goyal. Hyperbaric chamber. Who has one at home and why?
I think a lot of people have it at home.
Why do you have it at home?
I just use it to freshen up when I'm having a bad day.
So another version of a five-star spa, right? Or five cups of coffee at once.
So you win. Good game, good game.
Okay, so ping pong is about flow and temple is about the flow of blood to the brain.
It is also about the flow of blood.
You say 'also', because there are other things you can do.
The other things, the entropy that we measure, which is the metabolic rate per second, is the main point of temple. That's actually important because at rest it should be low. You should be burning a lower amount of calories at rest. If you're burning more calories at rest, then you have inflammation and there's something wrong going on with your body.
