Deepinder Goyal

A brokerage told clients the business would act as a poison pill. The shares fell for six straight sessions. Four years later it is the biggest thing the company owns.

In June 2022 Deepinder Goyal spent ₹4,447 crore of Zomato’s own stock on Blinkit, a quick commerce company that had shut dark stores, pulled out of cities and failed to raise money for several quarters running. In the quarter ended 30 June 2026, Blinkit’s net order value was ₹17,132 crore. Food delivery, the business Goyal had spent fourteen years building, did ₹10,769 crore.

What he bought is now 59% larger than what he built. That gap is the whole argument for him, and it is not an argument about operating skill.

Goyal’s distinctive capability is a tolerance for being publicly, expensively wrong for years at a time, in front of a live share price, without changing course. Founders who take a bet that size usually get one quarter of patience from the market and then start explaining. He did not explain. He held the position and then renamed the company after it.

The bet nobody wanted him to make

On 24 June 2022 Zomato’s board approved the purchase of up to 33,018 equity shares of Blink Commerce for ₹4,447.48 crore, paid entirely in stock: 62.85 crore new Zomato shares issued at ₹70.76 each. There was no cash in it. Existing shareholders funded the deal through dilution, and they registered their view the only way a public market allows.

They sold. Over the next six sessions the stock went from ₹70.50 to ₹55.10, a fall of more than 20%, touching an intraday low of ₹54.05. The company was down more than 60% for the year and worth about ₹41,970 crore. HSBC had already told clients that building a grocery business would work as a poison pill.

The objection was not stupid. Yashvardhan Singh, a principal associate at Sarvaank Associates, put it to Mint at the time: “Investors are not taking it kindly the fact that a loss-making company is acquiring another company which might be subjected to strict govt regulations and has not yet demonstrated path to profitability.” Every clause of that was accurate on the day it was said. Zomato was losing money. Blinkit was losing more. Ten-minute delivery was already drawing political attention. Nothing about the next four years was visible from where he was standing.

Then he renamed the company after it

Most founders who make an acquisition work fold it into the parent and keep the name they started with. On 6 February 2025 Goyal wrote to shareholders proposing the opposite. The corporate entity would stop being called Zomato.

His reasoning was unusually plain about what had happened to his own creation. “We also thought that we would publicly rename the company to Eternal, the day something beyond Zomato became a significant driver of our future. Today, with Blinkit, I feel we are there.” In the same letter he called Zomato an accidental company. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs approved the change with effect from 20 March 2025, and the ticker followed in April.

The change reads as a governance signal, not a branding exercise. A founder concluded that the asset he acquired mattered more than the asset carrying his name, and then made the statutory record say so. Very few do.

The case against him is that he only made the call

Here is the fact that complicates every sentence above. Goyal placed the bet. Somebody else executed it.

Blinkit was built by Albinder Dhindsa, who founded it, sold it to Zomato and then ran it inside the company that had bought him. When Goyal handed over operating control in January 2026 he was blunt about the comparison: “He has the DNA of a battle-hardened founder and his ability to execute far exceeds mine.” That is a founder saying on the record that the man who arrived with an acquisition is better at the job than he is.

The shareholders’ letter for the June 2026 quarter shows the same division of labour in print. Goyal answers the questions on food delivery margins, on new competitors and on the going-out business. Every operating question about Blinkit is answered by Dhindsa, and every question about capital by the chief financial officer. The vice chairman explains the strategy. Somebody else explains the stores.

Investors have also not been uniformly comfortable with how he is paid. Goyal waived his salary from April 2021 and later extended the waiver to March 2026, which reads well. He was compensated in options instead. When the company sought approval in 2024 for a fresh pool of 18.2 crore shares, worth more than ₹3,800 crore at the price of the day, 25% of shareholders voted against it. On a routine resolution, at a company the market was then rewarding with a triple-digit forward multiple, a quarter of the register voting no is not noise.

The five-year term

He resigned as managing director and chief executive with effect from 1 February 2026, saying the ideas he wanted to pursue involved higher-risk exploration that did not belong inside a listed company. He told shareholders those ideas sit in longevity and aerospace. He also surrendered unvested options valued at an estimated ₹900 crore to ₹1,000 crore, which went back into the employee pool.

Six weeks later he was back on the board as vice chairman, non-executive and unpaid, on a term the board recommended should run five years.

The aerospace half of that plan already exists, and it is assembled exactly the way Blinkit was. LAT Aerospace, which he set up with Surobhi Das, Zomato’s former chief operating officer, is attempting three of the hardest problems in the industry simultaneously: an eight-seat hybrid-electric aircraft that takes off from a space the size of a car park, defence autonomy systems, and gas turbine engines designed and tested in-house. Its own description of the last one is candid about the scale of the ask, calling it something only a handful of countries have ever developed. Goyal put in $20 million of the roughly $50 million raised. He is the non-executive co-founder. Das runs it.

LAT has the same structure as the deal that made him. He supplies the conviction and the capital for a position the market would not underwrite, and hands the execution to an operator he rates above himself. It has worked once, at enormous scale, in a business where the hard part was logistics.

Whether it survives a change of subject is the open question. Blinkit was a bet placed from inside a company that already had a balance sheet, a delivery fleet and paying customers, and it needed four years. A turbine is not a distribution problem, it is a metallurgy problem, and the clock on it is measured in decades. He has until 2031 on the Eternal board, and a flying demonstrator that has now been off the ground twice.

The record

Sources

• Eternal Limited, shareholders’ letter for the quarter ended 30 June 2026, 22 July 2026, for Blinkit’s net order value of ₹17,132 crore, food delivery’s ₹10,769 crore, and for which executive answers which question
• The Economic Times, Zomato to acquire Blinkit for Rs 4,447 crore in all-stock deal, 24 June 2022, for the board approval, the 33,018 equity shares of Blink Commerce, and the HSBC note describing a grocery business as a poison pill
• Mint, Zomato to acquire Blinkit for ₹4,447 crore in all-stock deal, 25 June 2022, for the 62.85 crore shares issued at ₹70.76 and the pre-announcement closing price
• Mint, Zomato shares tumble over 20% after announcement of Blinkit acquisition, 4 July 2022, for the fall from ₹70.50 to ₹55.10 across six sessions, the ₹54.05 intraday low, the year-to-date decline and the ₹41,970 crore market capitalisation, and for the Yashvardhan Singh quote
• Zomato Limited, intimation filed with the National Stock Exchange, 10 November 2022, recording that the Blinkit acquisition closed on 10 August 2022
• NDTV, What Zomato Said On Rebranding Firm, App Amid Buzz, 7 February 2025, for Goyal’s letter to shareholders, the quote on renaming the company once something beyond Zomato drove its future, and his description of Zomato as an accidental company
• The Economic Times, Food delivery giant Zomato gets regulatory nod for name change to Eternal Ltd, 20 March 2025, for the Ministry of Corporate Affairs approval effective 20 March 2025 and for the founding of Foodiebay in 2008
• Moneycontrol, Zomato ESOP plan gets shareholders’ nod, 25% oppose the move, July 2024, for the 18.2 crore share pool, the ₹3,800 crore value at the price of the day, the 75 to 25 split of the vote, and the forward multiple the stock was trading on
• Entrackr, Zomato appoints Deepinder Goyal as MD until 2026, allots hefty stock options, April 2021, for the five-year appointment and the waiver of basic salary for 36 months from April 2021
• Storyboard18, Deepinder Goyal to surrender ESOPs worth up to Rs 1,000 crore after stepping down as Eternal CEO, 22 January 2026, for the surrendered unvested options, the extension of the salary waiver to March 2026, and his stated focus on longevity and aerospace
• Mint, Eternal CEO Deepinder Goyal resigns, Blinkit’s Albinder Singh Dhindsa to take charge, 21 January 2026, for the handover and the quote on Dhindsa’s ability to execute
• Eternal Limited, Annual Report 2025-26, for the resignation effective 1 February 2026, the appointment as vice chairman and non-executive director from 13 March 2026, the five-year term recommended by the board, and the absence of remuneration or sitting fees
• Eternal Limited, board composition, for his current position on the board. Checked 27 August 2026
• Zomato Limited, board member profile for Deepinder Goyal, for his integrated master’s degree in mathematics and computing from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, his time at Bain and Company, and his title of vice chairman and non-executive director
• LAT Aerospace, company website, for the three programmes, the eight-seat hybrid-electric short take-off aircraft, the gas turbine engine programme and its description as a capability only a handful of countries have developed, and for Deepinder Goyal and Surobhi Das as its founders. Checked 27 August 2026
• Inc42, Zomato’s Deepinder Goyal Eyes Regional Aviation Venture With LAT Aerospace, 30 June 2025, for his $20 million investment, his role as non-executive co-founder, and Surobhi Das running the company
• NDTV, LAT Aerospace has not bought any private jet, Deepinder Goyal clarifies, 16 July 2025, for the roughly $50 million raised and Surobhi Das’s account of why they started it
• The Economic Times, Deepinder Goyal’s LAT Aerospace completes second demo of ultra-short take-off flight, for the second flight of the LAT One v0.2 demonstrator