I was a terrible student in school: Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal on failures, depression and competition

Deepinder Goyal started Zomato in 2010 and got his first investor cheque the same year from InfoEdge’s Sanjeev Bikhchandani.

One of the poster boys of the Indian startup ecosystem, Deepinder Goyal was not the studious type and would often fail in school, he confessed, adding that he once also tried to source question papers ahead of his examination to score well.

In his own words, it took a lot of hard work and consistency to get to where he is today.

“I don't have any linkage between any events of my childhood to whatever I am doing. I was a terrible student during school, used to be at the bottom of class. I used to fail… There was this teacher who actually gave me the answers to literally every exam that I had in the first semester of class 8 and I ranked third in the class,” the co-founder and chief executive officer of restaurant aggregator and food delivery service company Zomato confessed in an interaction with Manoj Kohli, country head of SoftBank, at the Confederation of Indian Industry’s Global Unicorn Series.

After this incident Goyal got overwhelmed with emotions as the behaviour of people close to him changed overnight.

“I started getting a lot of love from everyone including my parents, friends... I hadn't ever felt that kind of love before. In the second semester, I knew that the last semester was fake so I tried to go to this printing press guy in Muktsar (the town in Punjab where he grew up) to get the question papers upfront; ki yaar please de do (friend, please give it to me),” he said, adding, however, that he didn’t get anything.

After realising that there was no shortcut, Goyal said he started working hard and ended up coming fifth in the second semester.

That was his turning point.

“That's what gave me some confidence that I can do something if I want to. Life has been a treadmill ever since,” he said.

For his intermediate or pre-university course, Goyal moved from his small city to Chandigarh. As events would have it, Goyal could barely pass even in 11th standard with 39 percent marks.

However, he picked himself up again and eventually managed to clear the much-coveted Joint Entrance Examination which landed him at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi.

But it’s not as if life got back on track for Goyal. After all, IIT Delhi is a place that attracts some of the brightest minds from across the country.

“I got into the same loop one more time. But the big learning for me was that if you continue to progress you are always going to continue meeting people better than you and you are always going to work hard to stay on top of the game... That hard work is never going to stop,” he said.

While depression for many could be a negative word, for Goyal it is one of the biggest reasons why he thinks he needs to work hard.

“I have been on a sine wave all my life. It's a three-year cycle of depression to peaks and continues till date... It never stops and I think depression cycles are actually good because they drive me further up beyond a point,” he said.

Goyal started Zomato in 2010 and got his first investor cheque the same year from InfoEdge’s Sanjeev Bikhchandani. However, this wasn’t his first tryst with starting up.

Soon after finishing college, he started his first venture, a food ordering startup that perhaps presaged Zomato, right outside the gates of IIT Delhi in 2005. However it failed to fly perhaps because it was too far ahead of its time.

Goyal joined consultancy firm Bain & Co. thinking he wouldn’t spend more than a year there. However, he ended up staying with the firm for four years and gives complete credit to what he is today to his first employer.

“I would happily go back to Bain if I have to,” said Goyal of the old days. “Consulting is really good because it teaches you how to think, talk and communicate. Communication is the one thing that they just drill down into you, which is one of the most important things when you are leading a team or building a business. I couldn’t have gotten here if I didn’t have the training I got from Bain,” he added.

Towards the later part of his tenure at Bain, he started rebuilding his startup by taking a salary cut and trimming his role at the consultancy.

Fast forward to 2021, and Goyal is running a unicorn which just had a very successful public listing at a valuation of $12 billion. The company raised $1.2 billion aiming for organic and inorganic growth, with a good chuck earmarked for general corporate purposes as well.

Last month it also announced $175 million in investment across three home-grown startups—Shiprocket, Curefit and Magicpin—with an aim to diversify its bets.

It also plans to deploy $1 billion over the next one to two years across startups with a major focus on the quick commerce space.