Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal recently appeared on Raj Shamani’s podcast, ‘Figuring Out.’ Amid the recent debacle of the gig worker debate, Goyal set the record straight. However, the conversation, which started on a heavy note, took the billionaire startup founder back to his childhood days, which weren’t all pleasant. Having gone through several rough patches with his food delivery platform, Goyal has had multitudes of struggles as a founder, and his stammering became a huge part of it.
Often seen having problems while speaking, Eternal‘s Deepinder Goyal embraced this a challenge. Having never visited a speech therapist, he let his success do the talking and added, “I just stopped telling myself that I’m bothered with it. So, I just moved on.” Hitting the IPO bell in 2021, he built a $33 billion empire. Acquiring the quick commerce app, Blinkit, revenue soared even further as he expanded into other spaces with District and Hyperpure.
‘Don’t be his friend’
Everyone wants to befriend a billionaire. But not Deepinder Goyal, as he shared with Shamani. With his problem in stammering, Goyal recalled, “I used to be a very short, dark, stammering kid.” Poor at conventional school studies, the Zomato founder shared, “my friends’ parents used to tell them, ‘don’t be friends with him’,” during his young years. He went on to share that he scored 42 per cent during his 11th grade, a score much lower than to be considered ‘intelligent’ in the conventional education system.
Goyal revealed that his appearance as a short, dark kid did not bother him as much as his speech. “People didn’t listen. So, mid-sentence, people used to start talking about something else or stop listening and look away.” It is only after he achieved this extraordinary feat, he can afford to stammer and make people listen to him, no matter the pauses. While his family was supportive, several of his peers would bully him because of his appearance and stammering.
Goyal, with his stammering, eventually got way better at writing than speaking. Famous for his long posts and tweets, he remarked, “Even if I stammer, people will now listen to me. So, I have earned a little bit of that. Now I don’t care.” However, he still avoids interviews and public speaking as a means of communication.
Leading Zomato with Deepinder
Leading a billion-dollar company with a reluctance to speak in public comes as a major power move from Goyal. In fact, he revealed that the last time he addressed the employees of his food delivery startup was nearly 8 years ago. “I do my Town Hall on chat,” Goyal shared. However, during investor pitches, Goyal prefers to do the meeting one-on-one. When questioned about whether his stammering made him nervous during a business meeting, he said, “Maybe people chose not to invest in Zomato because of that…”
Turning bullying into his ‘lucky moment’
Looking at the bright side of his introverted nature, Goyal felt that his personality, stammering, and Asperger’s became his biggest ‘lucky moment’. His ability to build deeper connections, made helped him gain trust. “Zomato is built on trust…you don’t see that rapport in other companies,” he shared.
Making his introversion his superpower, he shared, ” I open up very easily. It doesn’t take me that much effort to be vulnerable in front of anyone. So, that builds bonds. Those bonds last forever.”
