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Zomato's Deepinder Goyal Is Now A Billionaire-In-Waiting

Zomato's stellar market debut makes Deepinder Goyal a billionaire-in-waiting.

<div class="paragraphs"><p>Source : Zomato&nbsp;</p></div>
Source : Zomato 

Deepinder Goyal has joined the league of Indian startup founders who have amassed vast personal fortunes as Zomato Ltd.’s shares surged on its trading debut.

Zomato soared as much as 83% over the issue price on listing day. The stock ended 65% higher than the initial public offering price at Rs 125.20 apiece, valuing Goyal’s 4.7% ownership at Rs 4,649.7 crore (about $625 million).

He was also granted about 36.9 crore equity shares though employee stock options this year and these will be vested over the next few years.

If Zomato's share price stays above Rs 101 apiece when those options are vested, his personal net worth will cross $1 billion, according to BloombergQuint’s calculations.

Goyal, a former Bain Co. consultant, is the most recent in line of the new-age entrepreneurs to see his wealth surge after starting their own business. While he joins the likes of Byju’s Byju Raveendran and Udaan’s Sujeet Kumar, he is the first one to reap the gains of taking the company he founded public.

Zomato, having gone public as a professionally run company with no promoters, is the first of a generation of internet unicorns to tap India’s capital markets. Its listing also turned co-founders and several employees into millionaires.

Goyal founded Zomato in 2008 along with his Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi batchmate Pankaj Chaddah as a delivery service for their Bain & Co. colleagues. The idea came after they realised their office café had limited options.

The duo started uploading menus of neighborhood outlets on the company intranet with phone numbers, and that became foodiebay.com. After tasting initial success among employees, they expanded by listing restaurants from Delhi-National Capital Region on their portal.

Two years later, Foodiebay caught the interest of InfoEdge India Ltd., which invested Rs 4.7 crore. In 2012, it changed the name to Zomato to rhyme with Tomato. The company also expanded overseas.

Chaddah left in 2018.

In the last 13 years, Zomato faced competition that forced several rivals to wind up. While it had to lay off employees in 2016 and retreat from international expansion, Zomato survived the phase and now dominates India’s restaurant discovery and food delivery market along with Swiggy.

Its IPO was subscribed more than 40 times and Zomato’s shares made a stellar debut surpassing expectation. The opening-day surge took its market capitalisation past Rs 1 lakh crore.