Just over a year ago, Zomato wasn’t exactly thriving — its stock was down 75 percent from its peak, and was trading at half of its IPO price. There had been concerns about an expensive acquisition of Blinkit, and a slowdown in the online food ordering space. But the company has managed to change its fortunes — and how.
Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal has become a billionaire after a 3x surge in Zomato’s share over the last 12 months. Zomato’s shares today touched a lifetime high of Rs. 232 per share, buoyed by the company hiking its ‘platform fee’ from Rs. 5 to Rs. 6 in select markets. Zomato’s shares are up 5x since January 2023.
This has meant that CEO Deepinder Goyal, aged just 41, is now worth Rs. 8,400 crore from his Zomato shareholding alone. As per Zomato’s shareholding pattern in March, Goyal holds 36.94 crore Zomato shares, which account for a 4.26 percent stake in the company. At current exchange rates, his shares are currently worth $1.02 billion, turning Goyal into a billionaire for the first time.
The surge in the price of Zomato shares puts Goyal into pretty rarified territory. After Byju Raveendran and Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma have been stripped of their billionaire status following slumps in the valuations of their respective companies, Goyal is now India’s richest startup founder behind Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu, Zerodha’s Kamath brothers, Nykaa’s Falguni Nayar, Browserstack’s Nakul and Ritesh Arora, and Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny Bansal. Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal is also believed to be a billionaire from his shareholding in Ola Electric, but an exact estimate of his net worth will become clearer once the company goes public.
It’s been a pretty incredible journey for Deepinder Goyal to becoming a publicly-listed billionaire. He’d founded Zomato in 2008 by scanning restaurant menus when he found it hard to order lunches at office when he was working with Bain and Company in Gurgaon; 16 years later, he’s worth a billion dollars. Entrepreneurship isn’t easy, and brings with a host of personal and professional challenges, but the results can often be something to behold.