Throwback: Zomato’s 13-year-old journey to IPO

The much-talked-about initial public offering (IPO) of foodtech unicorn Zomato is set to launch today. 

Zomato, which was founded in 2008 as a food listing platform named Foodiebay, has come a long way since Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chhadah began working on this idea in 2008 while they were at Bain Consulting.

By 2011, just three years after it was founded, Zomato became the go-to place for restaurant search and discovery. 

In the years since, it has been extensively expanding its operations, foraying into new categories, markets, and launching new services and offerings to emerge as one of the category leaders in the space. 

Now, the company — which is eyeing a post-issue valuation of Rs 64,365 crore at the upper-end of its issue price range of Rs 72-76 a share — is expected to soon launch online grocery services on its app, as it continues with its experiments in the grocery space. 

Ahead of Zomato’s Rs 9,375 crore IPO, we take a walk down memory lane to highlight some key milestones in the company’s journey so far. Read more.

Read all about how the Indian startup ecosystem is battling the second wave of COVID-19 here.

Here are some useful tools to help you find the nearest vaccine centres in real-time.

You can also share a tribute to COVID-19 warriors, saviours, and survivors here.

The Interview

In this episode of C-Suite, C K Venkataraman, Managing Director of Titan Company, speaks about what customer experience will be for Titan's iconic brands like Tanishq in emerging cities, and the value of focusing on the long term even during the pandemic.

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During their stint at Dvara, Suchitra Mukherjee and Puneet Gupta realised financial service products were not addressing the need for micro-savings or micro-insurance. 

The duo started Kaleidofin in 2017 — a neobank that offers simple, well designed financial solutions to address the needs of over 600 million underbanked and unbanked Indians engaged in the informal economy. Read more.

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A startup that aims to make students job-ready

When PN Santosh was building BYJU’S, India’s biggest edtech startup, he realised there was more to education than just targeting the K-12 segment. 

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News & Updates

• Walmart-owned Flipkart will undertake a buyback of employee stock options worth about Rs 600 crore, according to sources. On Monday, it announced raising $3.6 billion (about Rs 26,805.6 crore) in funding from a clutch of investors.

• The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has given its nod for a proposed deal involving SoftBank Group entity purchasing a stake in food ordering and delivery platform Swiggy.

• upGrad announced its first ESOP liquidity event worth Rs 220 crore ($29.5 million) that will benefit 37 of its early team members. The Mumbai-based startup's recent funding round led by Temasek and IFC has triggered a small secondary sale for "the early and long-term team members".

• After the resounding success of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in India, NPCI will now launch BHIM-UPI in Bhutan in collaboration with the Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan.

• Russia’s sovereign wealth fund Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) announced that it will work with the Serum Institute of India to produce the Sputnik V vaccine. The first batch of Sputnik V vaccines is expected to be produced at SII’s facilities in September.

Before you go, stay inspired with… 

“We saw that if we wanted to touch broader horizons then the name Foodiebay wouldn’t be the best choice as it constrains our perception to one of a food website... So, we decided to keep the idea of food at the centre but choose a name that is timeless and encompassing – Zomato.” 

— Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO, Zomato

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