Pankaj Chaddah

Pankaj Chaddah is an Indian entrepreneur who co-founded Zomato with Deepinder Goyal and later started wellness company Mindhouse, which evolved into Shyft.

From IIT Delhi and Bain to Zomato

Chaddah studied Mechanical Engineering at IIT Delhi and later worked at Bain & Company. He joined Goyal while the restaurant-information idea that became Foodiebay was still at an early stage. In 2008, the two built Foodiebay, a service that collected restaurant menus and information and made them easier to discover online.

The company was renamed Zomato in 2010 and expanded well beyond restaurant discovery. Chaddah played a broad operating role during its first decade. Public accounts from the period associate him with sales, marketing, operations and new initiatives. By 2015 he had served as chief operating officer, and he later helped launch businesses such as Zomato Gold and other new projects.

Leaving Zomato

In March 2018, after around ten years with the company, Chaddah announced that he would leave his active role. He said he had considered moving on for some time but did not want to leave during a difficult period for Zomato. Once he believed the company was back in stronger shape, he decided to take a break and explore what to build next.

That transition is an important part of his profile because it was not an exit following a public dispute. His own explanation was that he wanted a new professional chapter after spending most of his twenties building one company.

Mindhouse and Shyft

After taking time away, Chaddah and former Zomato executive Pooja Khanna started Mindhouse in 2019. It began with physical meditation centres in Gurugram, but the COVID-19 lockdown forced a rapid shift online. Chaddah later described one lesson carried over from Zomato: difficult periods are normal, so teams should focus on adapting rather than becoming overwhelmed by the setback.

Mindhouse broadened from meditation and mental wellness into yoga, nutrition and condition-focused wellness programmes. The company subsequently became Shyft, where Chaddah remains a co-founder. His post-Zomato journey shows a shift from consumer food technology to a health and wellness business built around longer-term lifestyle change.