Deepinder Goyal’s wearable company Temple in talks to raise $50 million from Steadview, Info Edge, Peak XV Partners, others

Temple, a new wearable device company founded by Eternal (formerly Zomato) chief Deepinder Goyal, is in the advanced stages to raise $50 million (around Rs 450 crore) from Steadview Capital, Vy Capital, Info Edge and Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India), and others, people familiar with the developments told Moneycontrol.

Goyal, along with a clutch of other Indian founders, will also invest in Temple's Seed round, which will be one of the largest by an Indian startup in recent years. Temple's employees are also likely to participate in the round, sources added.

Info Edge declined to comment, Peak XV Partners did not offer comments for the story. Steadview Capital and Vy Capital did not reply to Moneycontrol's queries.

Goyal did not respond to Moneycontrol.

What does Deepinder Goyal's company Temple do? 

Temple is a new company, started just over a year ago, that makes experimental devices, a patch of sorts that sticks to a person’s temple, and calculates brain flow on a real-time and continuous basis, is Goyal’s latest health tech venture after Continue.

Continue and Temple are both different entities. Continue, which does research, is funded solely by Goyal in his personal capacity. He had even invested around $25 million to fund the research Continue does.

He also runs LAT Aerospace and Eternal. All his four companies are unrelated to each other.

To be sure, Temple is an under-development continuous brain flow monitor, through proxy measurements, which also measures all the other biomarkers similar to what other popular brands like Whoop or an Oura do.

Goyal is also a shareholder in Ultrahuman, which makes smart rings and other devices to track health.

"The metrics from Temple devices are still being benchmarked, and also being validated by third parties. The device is meant to be a research grade device, and will only be launched for general audience after a few months," a second source said.

How much is Deepinder Goyal's wearables company Temple valued at? 

"The Seed round of around $50 million values Temple at around $125-130 million (about Rs 1,100-1,200 crore)," one of the persons cited above told Moneycontrol.

Who all is Temple raising money from?

Interestingly, all the institutional funds backing Goyal's new company Temple are the same ones who invested in Zomato during its early days. From Steadview to Vy Capital and Info Edge to Peak XV Partners, all the funds have been associated with Goyal during the early days of Zomato.

Info Edge's Sanjeev Bikhchandani had invested around Rs 5 crore (about $570k at the current USD/INR exchange rate) in Zomato back in 2010 when the company needed cash the most as it was staring at a shutdown. Bikhchandani was Zomato's first backer.

Similarly, Bhatnagar from Peak XV Partners (the Sequoia Capital India) – who cancelled his trip to the US and called an urgent meeting over a weekend – led Zomato’s $35 million Series A round in November 2013, making it one of Sequoia Capital India’s largest investments at that point in time, valuing the food tech company, then a mere restaurants listing platform, at around $500 million.

Today, Eternal’s market capitalisation stands at over $32 billion.

The story is the same with Steadview Capital and Vy Capital and their relationship with Goyal.

What will Temple use the funds for?

If the talks between the investors and Goyal fructify, Temple will use the funds for further development of the device. "The funds should last until the device is made public to the users at large," a source said.

While Temple may raise the money to potentially, in Goyal’s words, “shape into an important wearable the world needs” it is likely to remain “be a small cute company” and “nothing compared to Eternal” Goyal had said.