Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal registers Continue, a longevity venture focussed on health tracking, mental wellness

The authorised share capital of the company is Rs 50,00,000 and its paid-up capital is Rs 50,00,000. While authorised capital is the total value of shares a company can issue to shareholders, paid-up capital is the amount of capital that shareholders have paid to the company.

To be sure, this is Goyal’s personal venture at this point. In a statement to Moneycontrol, a company spokesperson said, “Zomato isn’t venturing into any new space, and continues to focus on its four businesses (Food Delivery, Blinkit, Hyperpure and District).”

Also read: Left Urban Company board as Blinkit is experimenting with similar service: Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal

Goyal, in a social media post, confirmed that Continue is his personal venture for now. "It is as of now, my personal health and wellness team, entirely funded by me, which tracks and researches how to keep me running at my peak performance," he wrote house after the story was published

"Spending time with the Continue team is like going to the gym for me. Or you can also say that it helps me avoid visits to doctors. We are developing new things, we have some new insights, and it will be super cool if one day, we are able to gather enough evidence behind what we have found, to share with the world. More updates when I have them," the post added.

Deepinder’s longevity bet

The move to incubate Continue ties in with Goyal’s interest in longevity and extending the lifespan of humans. It will, among other things, focus on mental health and onboard a sleep scientist too, a person familiar with his thinking said.

The ultimate health tracker could eventually become a comprehensive health and wellness platform that will focus on nutrition tracking, sleep tracking, mental health and preventive health.

As it happens, Goyal is an investor in Ultrahuman, a startup that makes wearables like the Ultrahuman Ring, which helps people measure sleep, heart rate, temperature among other vitals. It also allows people, especially athletes, to track their nutrition and fitness in real time.

Goyal first invested in the Alpha Wave-backed company back in 2021 and has increased his stake in the company by participating in follow-on rounds since then. He is the most prominent angel investor in the company and owns more than 8 percent in Ultrahuman, as per Tracxn, a private markets data provider.

Goyal’s fitness journey

In August 2023, Goyal shared in a blog that he had lost 15 kilograms in four years. “A glance into my personal fitness journey. In 2019, a few months before the pandemic, I started treating my health as an equal priority to my work. Nothing extreme but just maintained consistency,” Goyal wrote, adding that physical health – which also determines mental health – is a vital force behind a high-performance individual.

Zomato announced the appointment of a chief fitness officer for the company in the same post.

Past Zomato executives are also passionate about health and wellness at large. Zomato co-founder Gaurav Gupta launched Gabit, a smart ring maker and health and wellness platform, in January and raised $9.5 million from Norwest Venture Partners, Deepinder Goyal, Cred's Kunal Shah and others.

Similarly, Pankaj Chaddah, co-founder of Zomato, went on to start Shyft, which provides personalised wellness solutions for specific health conditions. The venture raised $6 million from Binny Bansal, General Catalyst and others.

Zomato’s diversification play

While Zomato was late to food delivery, it has gained market share over the years to go ahead of Swiggy and become the number one player. The company has various business units which are growing to become large, standalone businesses themselves.

Asked what his focus would be over the next 1-2 years, Goyal, in an interview to Moneycontrol earlier, had said, “Execution quality. Right now, our hands are very full. Six months ago, we used to say we have 3.5 business arms. Zomato, Blinkit, Hyperpure and we used to say dining out. But now that 3.5 has become 4 (after the planned Paytm Insider acquisition) so we have a lot on our plate.”

With four thriving business units, Zomato is also wary of competition. The company is likely to announce a capital raise to the tune of Rs 8,500 crore via a qualified institutional placement (QIP) and further up the ante with arch rival Swiggy which is due to list on the stock exchanges in a few weeks from now.

Swiggy’s IPO of over $1.4 billion is one of the biggest for a new-age company in the recent years after Paytm. While Swiggy’s roadshows are on, the company is likely to list during the first half of November, Moneycontrol had reported earlier.