About
Deepinder Goyal is the Punjabi‑born entrepreneur who turned a simple office lunch‑hour idea into Zomato, one of the world’s best‑known food‑ordering platforms. Since a shareholder vote and regulatory nod in March 2025, the listed parent company has traded as Eternal Ltd, though the consumer app still carries the Zomato name. Goyal—born on 26 January 1983 in Muktsar, Punjab—now oversees four verticals: food delivery (Zomato), quick commerce (Blinkit), dining‑out (District) and B2B supplies (Hyperpure). His stake in this expanding empire pushed his wealth past ₹15,300 crore (≈US $1.8 billion), placing him second on Hurun India’s 2024 list of self‑made entrepreneurs.
Zomato’s 2021 IPO, oversubscribed 35 times, marked India’s first tech unicorn listing and gave the firm a US $12 billion valuation on day one. Under Goyal’s watch the company has since crossed ₹1.8 lakh‑crore in market value while expanding to more than 1,000 Indian cities and 20‑plus countries.
Before Fame
Goyal grew up in a family of teachers—his father taught botany and his mother English—where textbook salaries meant careful budgeting and a do‑it‑yourself spirit. Bright in math, he won a place at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, graduating in 2005 with a degree in Mathematics and Computing.
His first job was as an associate consultant at Bain & Company in Gurgaon. Long queues at Bain’s cafeteria sparked an idea: an intranet site that displayed digital menu cards. Colleague Pankaj Chaddah helped him code the project. The prototype morphed into Foodiebay (2008) and, to avoid confusion with eBay, re‑emerged as Zomato in 2010. By 2011 Goyal had quit Bain, raised seed money from Info Edge and bet everything on the startup.
Trivia
- Billionaire club: A 300 percent rally in Zomato’s stock during 2024 vaulted Goyal into the billionaire ranks and made him Gurgaon’s second‑richest resident.
- New venture: In October 2024 he quietly funded Continue, a personal health‑and‑wellness lab that tracks nutrition, sleep and fitness data—initially just for himself, but with hints of a bigger consumer product.
- Television shark: Season 3 of Shark Tank India featured Goyal on the investors’ panel, where viewers praised his calm, numbers‑first feedback style.
- Controversial job ad: In November 2024 he posted for a chief‑of‑staff role that required candidates to deposit ₹20 lakh up‑front; he later said the fee was a filter and wouldn’t be collected, but the stunt ignited a social‑media debate about privilege.
- Corporate rename: The rebrand to Eternal Ltd signalled an ambition to stretch beyond food, with Blinkit’s rapid‑delivery growth cited as a key driver.
Family Life
Goyal’s first marriage was to IIT‑Delhi batch‑mate Kanchan Joshi, now a mathematics professor. They have a daughter, Siara.
After their separation he wed Mexican model‑turned‑entrepreneur Grecia Munoz (Gia Goyal) in a private ceremony in early 2024. Gia often appears with him at charity events and once joined him on a day of delivering Zomato orders to understand rider challenges. The couple lives in Gurgaon but travels frequently for work and philanthropy.
Associated With
- Pankaj Chaddah: Co‑founded Foodiebay/Zomato and steered early product design before exiting in 2018.
- Blinkit founder Albinder Dhindsa: Partners with Goyal inside Eternal’s quick‑commerce wing, challenging Amazon Fresh and Reliance JioMart.
- Shark Tank India peers: On the Season 3 dais he invested alongside Ritesh Agarwal, Aman Gupta, Namita Thapar, Anupam Mittal, Vineeta Singh and Peyush Bansal, sharing insights from Zomato’s scale‑up journey.
- Swiggy: Eternal’s fiercest rival—the competition even cost him a return spot on Season 4 when Swiggy became the show’s title sponsor.
From small‑town Punjab to the boardrooms of a multi‑vertical public company, Deepinder Goyal’s story is proof that a snack‑time frustration can snowball into a business that reshapes how an entire country orders food—and now, how it shops for almost everything else.
