"We Don’t Think a Slowdown Will Affect Us": Zomato Founder Deepinder Goyal
Deepinder Goyal is diversifying business to get as much share of consumer wallets as possible.
- Apr 2, 2025,
- Updated Apr 2, 2025 2:59 PM IST
The jury for the 13th edition of BT India’s Best CEOs awards conferred the Resilient CEO Award on Deepinder Goyal, Founder & CEO of Eternal, in recognition of his work in ensuring growth/profitability and leading the company into the BSE Sensex in 2024—the first new-age company (start-up) to find a place in the index. Goyal discusses the company’s growth and expansion plans with Siddharth Zarabi, Editor of Business Today. Edited excerpts:
How important was it for Zomato to become profitable? What does that mean for profitability across business verticals?
Turning profitable is important for every business. The food business turned profitable at the right time, as did Blinkit. We don’t really plan on profitability and just want to do the right thing. I think there’s a lot to look forward to in terms of growth of all businesses, as well as profitability. If growth happens, profitability should happen too.
There are concerns around slowing growth in certain segments. How are you looking at the overall consumer behaviour at this point?
If you look at the businesses we are in, which is food and grocery and retail at the lower end, we’re not seeing much of a macro slowdown. For the food delivery business, we are still expecting more than 20% growth year-on-year. So, given the nascent stage of the businesses we are in, we don’t think a slowdown is going to affect us. We don’t feel it at our end.
What was the thinking behind changing Zomato’s name to Eternal?
It’s more of a cultural mission statement for us. We have to build an organisation that lasts as long as possible. Again, for organisations which last that long, it’s not about the business you are in or will be in, since they (businesses) do become outdated in changing times. It’s more about the culture and having a team that innovates. These things ensure (generation of) new ideas and outcomes to stay relevant. So, that is the mission statement message to the organisation that we are not about a particular business; rather, we are about being relevant to the constantly changing times.
Blinkit is today a benchmark for speed of delivery. Is food delivery amenable to further speed and efficiency?
A 30-minute food delivery was fast two years ago. In fact, it was the norm. And then came quick commerce and spoilt us. People now expect food also in 10-15 minutes. Right now, we don’t have the answers for food delivery in that kind of time, but customers want it. We are looking at various ways to do it.
How much more can customers expect in terms of improvement?
I don’t have a universal answer to this. For example, if you want a gourmet dish, it will take time. There’s no way we can give you a hot and fresh pizza or a gourmet pizza in five or 10 minutes. But if you want a coffee and a patty, we can get them to you in five minutes, or a sandwich and a coffee in five or may be 10 minutes. And as soon as the density goes up, we might be able to shrink time for more items than what we start with. That’s why it’s not going to be a universal answer.
Even in quick commerce, not everything can be in 10 minutes, right? Fashion, apparel, electronics and some of the larger goods will take more than that.
What is the long-term plan for the entertainment ticketing business that you acquired from Paytm?
We already had a dining out business and that is about people stepping out of home. We noticed that when people step out to go to a restaurant, they could watch a movie. Or, if they go to watch an IPL game, a visit to a restaurant follows. So, we wanted to combine all the going-out use cases, put them into one single app and make that the default going-out app.
That was the thinking with Dining Out-we had it in the main app (food app), but over time we wanted it to have a separate app and a use case. We don’t believe in the super app concept and go for as many separate apps as we can. It made sense to collaborate with Paytm and bundle all these use cases into one.
The jury for the 13th edition of BT India’s Best CEOs awards conferred the Resilient CEO Award on Deepinder Goyal, Founder & CEO of Eternal, in recognition of his work in ensuring growth/profitability and leading the company into the BSE Sensex in 2024—the first new-age company (start-up) to find a place in the index. Goyal discusses the company’s growth and expansion plans with Siddharth Zarabi, Editor of Business Today. Edited excerpts:
How important was it for Zomato to become profitable? What does that mean for profitability across business verticals?
Turning profitable is important for every business. The food business turned profitable at the right time, as did Blinkit. We don’t really plan on profitability and just want to do the right thing. I think there’s a lot to look forward to in terms of growth of all businesses, as well as profitability. If growth happens, profitability should happen too.
There are concerns around slowing growth in certain segments. How are you looking at the overall consumer behaviour at this point?
If you look at the businesses we are in, which is food and grocery and retail at the lower end, we’re not seeing much of a macro slowdown. For the food delivery business, we are still expecting more than 20% growth year-on-year. So, given the nascent stage of the businesses we are in, we don’t think a slowdown is going to affect us. We don’t feel it at our end.
What was the thinking behind changing Zomato’s name to Eternal?
It’s more of a cultural mission statement for us. We have to build an organisation that lasts as long as possible. Again, for organisations which last that long, it’s not about the business you are in or will be in, since they (businesses) do become outdated in changing times. It’s more about the culture and having a team that innovates. These things ensure (generation of) new ideas and outcomes to stay relevant. So, that is the mission statement message to the organisation that we are not about a particular business; rather, we are about being relevant to the constantly changing times.
Blinkit is today a benchmark for speed of delivery. Is food delivery amenable to further speed and efficiency?
A 30-minute food delivery was fast two years ago. In fact, it was the norm. And then came quick commerce and spoilt us. People now expect food also in 10-15 minutes. Right now, we don’t have the answers for food delivery in that kind of time, but customers want it. We are looking at various ways to do it.
How much more can customers expect in terms of improvement?
I don’t have a universal answer to this. For example, if you want a gourmet dish, it will take time. There’s no way we can give you a hot and fresh pizza or a gourmet pizza in five or 10 minutes. But if you want a coffee and a patty, we can get them to you in five minutes, or a sandwich and a coffee in five or may be 10 minutes. And as soon as the density goes up, we might be able to shrink time for more items than what we start with. That’s why it’s not going to be a universal answer.
Even in quick commerce, not everything can be in 10 minutes, right? Fashion, apparel, electronics and some of the larger goods will take more than that.
What is the long-term plan for the entertainment ticketing business that you acquired from Paytm?
We already had a dining out business and that is about people stepping out of home. We noticed that when people step out to go to a restaurant, they could watch a movie. Or, if they go to watch an IPL game, a visit to a restaurant follows. So, we wanted to combine all the going-out use cases, put them into one single app and make that the default going-out app.
That was the thinking with Dining Out-we had it in the main app (food app), but over time we wanted it to have a separate app and a use case. We don’t believe in the super app concept and go for as many separate apps as we can. It made sense to collaborate with Paytm and bundle all these use cases into one.