Failure is something all successful entrepreneurs have in common, but they are rarely discussed. For Deepinder Goyal, the man behind Zomato, that story is Foodlet. Right out of IIT Delhi in 2005, Deepinder started an online food delivery platform that was way ahead of its time. He invested nine months of his life into making it work, but the project failed. The failure probably turned out to be his best teacher. The experience taught him patience, timing, and how to build a business the right way.
Today, Zomato operates in over 24 countries, serving millions of customers daily, and is valued at billions of dollars. This is the story of how Deepinder Goyal turned his biggest failure into his biggest success.
The Boy from Muktsar Who Almost Failed at Everything
Deepinder Goyal was born on January 26, 1983, in Muktsar, a small town in Punjab. He was brought up in a modest middle-class family with teacher-parents. His father taught Botany, and his mother taught English. Money was always an issue, and nobody expected much from the young Deepinder.
After school, he out more effort and finally succeeded in getting through the IIT Joint Entrance Examination on his very first attempt. This was impressive for someone who had had an academic struggle. Deepinder got his integrated master’s degree in Mathematics and Computing from IIT Delhi in 2005.
The Rise and Fall of Foodlet
Deepinder started his first startup, Foodlet.com, right after graduating from IIT Delhi in 2005. He was just 22 years old then, fresh out of college, and full of confidence. The idea seemed brilliant and simple. Foodlet.com would connect to restaurants and share their offers on the website. Customers could view these offers and order food online directly through that platform. Facebook was just one year old. There were no smartphones. Most Indians had never done an online transaction. The internet was slow and expensive. Deepinder and his friend Prasoon Jain founded Foodlet.com.
Both were full-time workers on the project and kept on for nine consecutive months. They did everything in their power to get it off the ground. Deepinder had been convinced of the success of his idea. A future where people ordered food with just a few clicks could be seen by him. He saw it: busy professionals, lazy students, and hungry families all making use of his platform. The sky was the limit for the idea. But the reality was harsh. There were no takers for online food orders. The primary problem was that of trust; people were wary of giving money to unknown websites.
Why Foodlet Didn’t Work
Nine months of hard work had yielded zero output. Deepinder had put in his time, energy, and dreams into Foodlet.com, and it didn’t work out. He pinpointed the failure of the company to only two reasons. Firstly, in 200,5 customers were not ready to order food online. The market for that didn’t exist yet. People were hesitant about doing transactions online. They did not have credit cards or debit cards with internet banking. Even if they had wanted to place an order online, the payment systems were not secure or trustworthy. Most restaurants didn’t even have websites or online presence, so it was almost impossible to convince them to join an online platform.
Secondly, the business was too labour-intensive to be run, especially if Deepinder didn’t have proper funding and support from the team. Foodlet.com had to have delivery personnel, which meant hiring and managing people. It had to have a customer support system that would handle complaints and queries. It required technology infrastructure to process orders and payments. All of this needed money, a lot of money, which Deepinder did not have. He was a fresh graduate with no investors and no business experience. Running an operation-heavy business without resources is like trying to swim across an ocean while you don’t know how to swim.
Deepinder, thinking about it years later, admitted that 2005 was too early for online food ordering in India. He was right, but at the wrong time. The infrastructure was not ready. Consumer behaviour was still what it used to be. Technology hadn’t progressed enough. Foodlet.com was a brilliant idea, but it was too far ahead of its time. This acknowledgement was difficult, but it was important because it taught Deepinder that timing is even more important than the idea.
Restarting at Bain and Company
After closing down Foodlet.com, Deepinder was in need of stability and time for recovery. In January 2006, he took a job at Bain and Company, a top business management consulting firm located in Gurgaon, Haryana. His entry position was Associate Consultant. Deepinder thought he would only be there for a year, but in the end, he stayed at Bain for three years. The work was great. It gave him good pay and a lot of valuable experience in business strategy and operations. The most important thing that Bain gave to Deepinder after his failure was time to watch, learn, and plan his next step.
During his lunch breaks at Bain, Deepinder saw a very interesting thing. His coworkers were always having a hard time trying to get restaurant menus. To find the menu cards, they either physically went to the pantry area or kept asking friends until they found out who to order food from. This finding was very sticky for Deepinder. People needed easy access to restaurant information. They needed to know which restaurants were nearby, what they served, and how much it was. Providing restaurant information was much easier than delivering food, which needed a huge infrastructure. All that was needed was to gather the menus and upload them. No logistics, no delivery partners, no complex operations.
Deepinder seriously started pondering over this issue. He had the memory of his Foodlet.com failure and how the idea was overly ambitious for 2005 India. However, providing restaurant information was a different thing. It solved a real, immediate problem without forcing people to change their habits drastically. People didn’t have to trust online payments or wait for delivery. What they needed was information to be able to make better food decisions. This simple insight would become the seed for his next startup.
Lessons Deepinder Learned From Foodlet
The failure of Foodlet.com was a very important experience for Deepinder Goyal, as it taught him several critical lessons that fundamentally changed his perspective on business and entrepreneurship. The most significant lesson was about timing. Foodlet.com was not a failure because the idea was bad; it was a failure because the market was not ready for it. In 2005, India didn’t have the internet infrastructure, smartphone penetration, digital payment systems or consumer trust required for online food delivery to work. Deepinder grasped that even brilliant ideas could fail if they were launched at an inappropriate time. This lesson made him more patient and more strategic when deciding to launch new features or products.
The second lesson was about managing resources and being sustainable. Foodlet.com died because it had exhausted its resources before it could gain traction. Deepinder understood that startups should have either sufficient funding or a viable business model that brings in revenue from the start. When he launched his next venture, he didn’t leave his job at Bain right away. He worked on the new project as a side hustle for two years, which allowed him to be financially stable while building the business. This gave him the runway to experiment and grow without the pressure of money running out. He also learned that it is better to start with something simple that does not require a large investment upfront.
The third lesson was about the importance of teamwork and starting small. After Prasoon Jain left Foodlet.com, Deepinder tried to keep things going by himself but failed. He understood that having the right co-founder and team members is not an option, but a necessity. A startup needs different skills, sharing of the workload, and support in the tough periods from the team members. Moreover, Foodlet.com was trying to do too much too quickly. It was trying to create a complete food delivery ecosystem when the basic infrastructure was not there. Deepinder understood the importance of starting with a minimum viable product that solves one problem well and then growing from there. These lessons learned through failure became more valuable than any success could have taught him.
The Birth of Foodiebay and Eventually Zomato
Deepinder, with his colleague Pankaj Chaddah, worked on a new idea called Foodiebay in July 2008. After the failure of Foodlet.com, Deepinder used the lessons he had learned. Foodiebay was not about food delivery at the very beginning. A restaurant discovery platform with customised food guides, personalised reviews, and restaurant menus was what it provided. It did not have any delivery or payment system or complicated logistics. It was only information about restaurants. The idea was simple, the execution was straightforward, and it solved a real problem that Deepinder had personally observed at Bain.
Deepinder and Pankaj treated Foodiebay as a side project while still doing their full-time jobs at Bain. This was a clever move. While they were paid well, they were still able to build their startup, and thus the lack of resources, which led to the failure of Foodlet, was not a problem for them. They could do it at their own pace without being forced to make money straight away. The reaction was off the charts. Foodiebay managed to become the largest restaurant directory in Delhi NCR with a team of just six people in only nine months. People loved having easy access to restaurant menus and reviews. The platform grew organically as more people discovered it and shared it with friends.
In late 2009, Deepinder and Pankaj concluded that Foodiebay was a gold mine of an idea. As a result, they left the luxury and comfort of their jobs at Bain in November 2009 to devote their time fully to the startup. They got the company registered officially on January 18, 2010. They changed the name of the company from Foodiebay to Zomato in November 2010. It was a strategic move as they wanted a brand that was global, memorable, and not confused with eBay. In April 2010, they got their first bigshot funding of 4.7 crore rupees from Info Edge. The firm spread like wildfire not only in India but also in foreign cities. In 2015, the time when Zomato made a foray into the food delivery market, it was the right time because smartphones were widely used and digital payments had become common.
From Failure to Billionaire Success
Zomato was listed publicly in July 2021 with an IPO of 1.1 billion dollars. It was one of the first Indian unicorn startups to be listed on the stock exchange. The IPO was oversubscribed 38 times, which was an indicator of the great trust investors had in the company. In July 2023, Zomato was able to record its first profitable quarter since it was founded, with a net profit of 2 crore rupees, marking a historic milestone for the business model. Zomato, as of now, is operating in 24-plus countries and is catering to 10,000-plus cities worldwide. Zomato acquired Uber Eats India in January 2020 through an all-stock deal. Similarly, in August 2022, Zomato acquired Blinkit, a quick commerce platform, for 568 million dollars and expanded its business beyond food delivery to grocery delivery.
As of 2024, Deepinder Goyal’s net worth is more than 8,300 crore rupees. He is a 4.24% shareholder of Zomato. Moreover, he has some luxurious real estates like a 10,813 square feet apartment in Gurugram’s DLF Camellias that is worth 52.3 crore rupees and a 5-acre land plot in Delhi that is worth 79 crore rupees. His prestigious car collection consists of a Ferrari Roma worth 4.76 crore rupees, a Porsche 911 Turbo worth 3.35 crore rupees, and a Lamborghini Urus worth 4.18 crore rupees. However, Deepinder still remembers where he came from. He has promised to donate the profits from Zomato’s Employee Stock Ownership Plans, which are estimated at around 700 crore rupees, to the Zomato Future Foundation that provides education for the children of delivery agents.
Deepinder is one of the startup ecosystem’s prolific investors. 16 startups, including Bira 91, HyperTrack, TerraDo, SquadStack, ChefKart, and Unacademy, count on him as an investor. On Shark Tank India, he is a judge to whom the young entrepreneurs seek guidance and with whom he shares his journey. Deepinder was quoted as saying in his interviews that it was his plan all along to integrate the features of Foodlet into Zomato once the main venture got successful. Actually, Zomato is kind of a new version of what Foodlet.com could have been if the time were different. The failure was heartbreaking, but it has become the base of phenomenal success.
Failure is Just the Beginning, Not the End
The narrative of Foodlet.com and Zomato is not merely one of financial gain. This narrative is about the qualities of resilience, learning, and getting the courage to try again after falling. Deepinder might have decided to quit after the downfall of Foodlet.com. He might have blamed the market, the investors, or his luck. On the contrary, he took the reins, learned from his faults, and came up with a clever plan. He did not allow the one failure to define his entire life or career.
Deepinder Goyal’s journey from Foodlet.com to Zomato is a clear demonstration of the power of the right mindset, patience, and persistence, that quite often, the most agonising failures can be the foundation of one’s eventual remarkable success. The guy who was about to fail at school, whose father had to beg the principal for promotion, who shut down his first startup after nine months of struggle, was finally able to build a billion-dollar company. If Deepinder managed to do it, so can everyone else. The sole condition is the refusal to give up when things get tough.
FAQs
- What was Foodlet, and why did it fail?
Foodlet.com was an online food delivery platform started by Deepinder Goyal in 2005, right after graduating from IIT Delhi. It failed because India was not ready for online food ordering in 2005. Customers did not trust online platforms, the internet infrastructure was poor, and digital payments were uncommon.
- How did Deepinder Goyal recover from the Foodlet.com failure?
After the closure of Foodlet.com, Deepinder started working as a consultant at Bain and Company in 2006. After serving there for three years, he got a lot of business experience. In 2008, he and a colleague, Pankaj Chaddah, started Foodiebay as a side project where they also kept their jobs.
- What lessons did Deepinder Goyal learn from Foodlet.com?
Deepinder extracted five very important lessons from the failure of Foodlet.com. First, the time of the idea counts more than the idea itself. Second, startups require sustainable resources and funding. Third, having the right team and co-founder is vital. Fourth, beginning with a minimum viable product and then scaling. Fifth, get to know real customer behaviour rather than just assuming it. These lessons formed the ground on which he built Zomato.
- How is Zomato different from Foodlet.com?
Zomato is not the same as Foodlet.com. Foodlet.com was an attempt at online food delivery that was launched in 2005, but the market was not mature enough. Zomato was launched in 2008 as a restaurant discovery platform providing menus and reviews.
- What is Deepinder Goyal doing now?
Deepinder Goyal is the CEO of Zomato, which is present in more than 24 countries and serves millions of customers every day. He is a judge on Shark Tank India, has 16 startup investments to his name, and, through the Zomato Future Foundation, has committed 700 crore rupees worth of ESOP profits to charity.
You can learn more about Deepinder Goyal by following him on LinkedIn, Instagram, and X. You can also explore Zomato’s official website to know more about his company’s journey. Don’t forget to check out Zomato’s social media, Instagram, X, Facebook, and LinkedIn pages for their latest updates and insights.
To read the complete success story of Zomato and Deepinder Goyal, head over to our detailed blog.
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