Deepinder Goyal

Deepinder Goyal is an Indian entrepreneur best known for building Zomato from a restaurant-menu website into one of India’s largest consumer internet businesses. After stepping away from the CEO role at Eternal in 2026, his work has increasingly shifted towards new ventures including Temple and LAT Aerospace.

Early career and first failure

Goyal studied Mathematics and Computing at IIT Delhi, completing an integrated M.Tech in 2005. Soon after college, he tried building Foodlet.com, an online food-ordering startup. The venture lasted only a few months. Goyal later said the idea was too early for India, where consumers were not yet comfortable ordering food online and the operating model required more resources than he had.

He then joined Bain & Company in 2006. While working there, he noticed colleagues repeatedly looking through restaurant menu cards before ordering food. This led him to a simpler version of the problem he had tried to solve with Foodlet: instead of processing orders, put restaurant menus online and make discovery easier.

Building Zomato

In 2008, Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah started Foodiebay, initially as a restaurant discovery and menu platform. It was renamed Zomato in 2010. Over the following years, the company expanded across cities and countries, entered online ordering and food delivery, and later built or acquired businesses including Hyperpure, Blinkit and District. Zomato listed in India in 2021, and its listed parent was renamed Eternal Limited in 2025.

The journey also included setbacks. During its aggressive international expansion, Zomato accumulated heavy losses, closed or reduced operations in some markets and carried out layoffs. Goyal later acknowledged that the company had expanded too aggressively and that its processes were not strong enough for the pace of growth.

How he thinks about people and work

Goyal has repeatedly described hiring as one of a founder’s most important jobs. His stated preference is to look beyond technical skill towards ethics, attitude, ownership, ability to learn and comfort with candid feedback. At senior levels, he has increasingly preferred developing leaders from within the organisation rather than relying heavily on external hires.

His comments on decision-making also show an emphasis on self-correction. In 2026, he wrote that he had learned to examine the emotion behind important decisions, and that recognising fear, ego or impatience had sometimes caused him to change course.

What stands out

Goyal’s career shows a pattern of testing ideas, learning from failed or mistimed attempts and returning to the same underlying problem with a different model. Foodlet failed, Zomato later succeeded with a simpler starting point, and the company itself repeatedly changed direction as the market evolved. His approach appears to place unusually high weight on people, organisational culture, candid feedback and the willingness to revise decisions rather than defend them.

Today, alongside his position as Vice Chairman and Non-Executive Director of Eternal, Goyal is building Temple, a health-technology company, and LAT Aerospace, which is developing aircraft for regional connectivity.