Deepinder Goyal, founder and CEO of Zomato revealed during a chat with Info Edge founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani at Startup Mahakumbh in New Delhi that the foodtech giant is currently in in its fourth iteration of operations. This marks a significant milestone in Zomato’s 16 year journey. Goyal highlighted that the tech industry is rapidly evolving and businesses have to learn to adapt to change.
“None of the business models created today will last beyond a decade,” he said.
Goyal spoke about how building a generational company today is a daunting task, compared to the relatively path that it was a few decades ago.
“It is harder to create a generational company today than few decades ago because of technology. You have to create new businesses out of the outcomes you have created so far, if you want to last. This is Zomato’s fourth version (since it started 16 years back),” he said.
He also said that his employees voluntarily took pay cuts during the pandemic to help maintain cash flow in the business, highlighting the importance of establishing a good work culture.
“80 percent of the team took voluntary cuts. We did not ask anyone. That’s building good culture. It’s the only moat in the long run,” he said.
Goyal added, ”Building a strong team is one of the biggest privileges as a founder.”
He also mentioned that even though customer preferences should be held in high regard, the customer can sometimes be wrong or uncertain about their preferences. He emphasised the importance of active listening and proactive initiatives in building a ribs customer service and sales channels to tackle this.
“Customers say a lot of things but there have to be enough people in your organisation who listen to them and take initiatives. Customers are also wrong sometimes, and they don’t know what they want,” Goyal said.
Interestingly, Goyal said that in a year’s time, Zomato’s quick commerce platform Blinkit could potentially become larger the Zomato’s food delivery service if it continued to maintain an 80-100 percent year-on-year growth rate.