Zomato‘s 38-year-old founder Deepinder Goyal is now among India’s Super Rich. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. This is following the grand market debut of Zomato’s initial public offer (IPO). Also its listing on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and Bombay Stock Exchange. The start-up founder is now worth about $650 million considering his 4.7 per cent stake in Zomato.
Goyal said in a blog posting on Friday, “Today is a big day for us. But we couldn’t have gotten here without the incredible efforts of India’s entire internet ecosystem.”
Goyal and colleague Pankaj Chaddah started the journey by uploading menus of neighbourhood cafes and restaurants onto the company intranet, with phone numbers. That was a huge hit with coworkers, they christened their venture as foodiebay.com. As it went on to be quite popular the name was changed to Zomato. Global investors such as Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management and Jack Ma’s Ant Group Co. joined as backers. The journey that started in 2008 is an inspiration to start-up founders and entrepreneurs in India.
Zomato, based in Gurgaon on the outskirts of Delhi, has since embarked on an international expansion. Goyal is now possibly looking at bringing in a grocery delivery feature to the Zomato app
The group of ultra-rich startup entrepreneurs in the country is small. Those topping $1 billion include Byju Raveendran of online education provider Byju’s. Also Vijay Shekhar Sharma of digital payments pioneer Paytm. Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, cofounders of online retailer Flipkart.
Also Read: Zomato Launches IPO Today: Things To Know Before Subscribing For Shares