Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal broke his silence for the first time on the much anticipated IPO of the company he founded over a decade ago. He stayed away from investor roadshows, analyst meet and media interviews so far, but as Zomato gets ready to list today, he penned a heartfelt note to shareholders and India's startup ecosystem.
Here's the full text of what he wrote on the Zomato blog.
I’m a firm believer in India, and where our country will be in the future. India is a tough market to operate in, but if you are building to succeed in India, you are already exceptional. I say that because I believe Zomato and Swiggy are two of the best food delivery apps in the world today. We have a long way to go before we can call ourselves world class by our customers’ standards, but we are determined to get there.
Our 10+ year journey has not always been smooth. We have lived through many ups and downs – something not every company has the privilege of living long enough to do. I have made many decisions which have been good for the company, while some have caused our stakeholders a lot of heartburn. That said, we have found ourselves managing times of crisis on different occasions in much the same way – impatiently staying focused on the long term, executing relentlessly, and committing ourselves to doing the very best we can do today.
Even in our hardest times, we’ve had half of our tech/engineering team work on long-term initiatives. And during the good times, we double down on the long term even harder. The only short term work we do is whatever will earn us the right to continue building the future. We deeply understand that anything good and meaningful takes decades to build.
We are going to relentlessly focus on 10 years out and beyond, and are not going to alter our course for short term profits at the cost of long term success of the company. The tremendous response to our IPO gives us the confidence that the world is full of investors who appreciate the magnitude of investments we are making, and take a long term view of our business.
They say it takes a village to raise a child, and we are no exception. Hundreds of people have selflessly played a part in making Zomato what it is today. While some of them no longer work with us, the influence of Pankaj, Saurabh, Mohit Kumar, Mukund, Akshar, and so many others can still be felt at Zomato. To our investors who have stood by us through thick and thin; Sanjeev, Mohit, Vamsi, Vishesh, Eric – we thank you for your confidence in us, and we hope to live up to your expectations in the future.
Today is a big day for us. A new Day Zero. But we couldn’t have gotten here without the incredible efforts of India’s entire internet ecosystem. Jio’s prolific growth has set all of us up for unprecedented scale. Flipkart, Amazon, Ola, Uber, Paytm – have also over the years, collectively laid the railroads that are enabling companies like ours to build the India of the future. We stand proudly and humbly on the shoulders of giants, and we thank everyone for giving us, and so many other startups, the opportunity to look ahead into the future.
I don’t know whether we will succeed or fail – we will surely, like always, give it our best. But I hope that the fact that we are here, inspires millions of Indians to dream bigger than we ever have, and build something way more incredible than what we can dream of.
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