IIT’s Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddha started ‘Foodiebay’ in 2008, which became Zomato. After competition from Swiggy in 2015, it transformed from a menu directory to a food delivery company. Today it is a huge empire with services like Blinkit.
Zomato Success Story: Today is 10th July. And today is the 18th birthday of that Zomato, which brings us hot food even at midnight. The story of Zomato seems like a film script, which is quite interesting to listen to. This story starts in Delhi in 2008. The heroes of this story are two IIT educated youth – Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chadha. Both of them were working in a big consulting firm of Delhi, ‘Bain & Company’, at a good salary.
Deepinder and Pankaj did not start Zomato with the plan of starting any business. As he later explained many times, the idea was born out of hunger. There was a huge crowd in the office canteen every day at lunch time. People had to stand in long queues even to order food by looking at the menu card brought from the restaurant. One day, an idea came to Deepinder Goyal’s mind while standing in a queue suffering from hunger. Why not scan all these menu cards and put them on the office website? With this, people will be able to view the menu and order while sitting at their seat.
He worked on his idea and it became a super-duper hit! Everyone in the office started using this website. When the traffic on the website increased, he realized that this was not just a problem of his office but of entire Delhi. After this he decided to leave his job and devote himself completely to this work. He started a website named ‘Foodiebay.com’ by scanning the menus of restaurants in Delhi.
When the company slowly started growing, they decided to change the name to ‘Foodiebay’. The reason for this was that this name was similar to the big company ‘eBay’. They wanted a name that would be easy on people’s tongues and would be associated with food. After a lot of thinking, he kept the name ‘Zomato’, which is similar to the word ‘Tomato’.
But in the initial days, Zomato did not do food delivery. It was just like a ‘digital directory’, which told what good food is available at a place, what is the ambiance of the restaurant and what are the prices there.
A big twist in this story came in 2015. By then, Zomato, which was the king in India, faced a new competitor named ‘Swiggy’. Swiggy not only showed the menu, but also started picking up food from restaurants and delivering it to people’s homes! This created a big crisis for Zomato. There were only two options before him – either change himself, or else perish.
Company founder Deepinder Goyal chose the first path. Zomato also entered the world of online food delivery by creating a team of its own delivery boys. Zomato made extensive use of offers and discounts to attract customers. Eventually, Zomato also strengthened its hold on the market in India by purchasing foreign companies like Uber Eats.
There was a time when the company did not even have money to pay salaries to its employees, but in July 2021, the same company made a explosive entry in the Indian stock market. This was the first time that a loss-making Indian internet company was getting listed on the stock exchange. But what happened next was a miracle. Millions of common people of India trusted and invested money in Zomato and the company became a huge success overnight.
Today Zomato is not just a food delivery company. ‘Blinkit’, which delivers household goods in just 10 minutes, is today a part of Zomato. Businesses like ‘Hyperpure’, which supplies vegetables and essential items to restaurants, and ‘District’, which books movie-event tickets, have also partnered with Zomato. Meanwhile, co-founder Pankaj Chaddha parted ways with the company, but Deepinder Goyal continued to take the company forward single-handedly. Today Deepinder Goyal is one of the youngest billionaires of India.
This story, which started from a small line in the office canteen, has today become an empire worth Rs 1 lakh crore, which is providing employment to lakhs of youth and satisfying the hunger of crores of people. The biggest secret of Zomato’s success is to be ready for change at the right time.