'Unseen': Deepinder Goyal’s business biography dares to be honest

I read voraciously but am wary of the hashtag business biographies. Most often, they are hagiographies, written to make the subject look not just good but perfect.

There are two reasons for this. One, the businessman arm-twists the author, who needs access to inside company info which only he can provide. Two, the writer gets so close to the subject as to lose all objectivity.

The outside world sees the creation of a unicorn as a project of relentless, flawless perfection. Reality? It is messy business, full of miscalculations, twists and turns, human frailty – and huge dollops of luck (entrepreneur/investor Sanjeev Bikhchandani alludes to this).

Megha Vishwanath has captured all these elements superbly in the mesmerising rise of Zomato. Credit to Deepinder Goyal for trusting her to paint his flaws as well as his strengths. This is especially remarkable because the writer, a former journalist, is now employed at Zomato.

She writes about the social misfit from a small Punjab town and tracks the start of the venture (Foodiebay) as an online menu listing site. Flawed optimism encourages Deepinder to expand the listings business abroad, peaking in the 2015 acquisition of US Urban Spoon for $50 million (later written off).

While Zomato was nurturing global ambitions in the listings business, in 2014, Swiggy, a Bengaluru-based startup, entered the food delivery space. Deepinder obstinately refused to see what now seems obvious: that food delivery would be a whole lot bigger.

There are many fascinating incidents in the book. How, in a casual conversation with a close friend, Albinder Dhindsa, who had started Grofers, a grocery delivery biz, Deepinder suggested that the way to hook consumers would be to deliver in 10 minutes. Zomato later acquired Grofers, rebranded it Blinkit, and the quick commerce phenomenon was born.

Again, when Uber Eats was exiting India in 2020 and its business seemed certain to fall into the lap of the well-funded Swiggy, Zomato had money left for only a few months. In desperation, Deepinder and his team flew to the Uber HQ in San Francisco without even an appointment and managed to walk out with an all-stock deal three days later.

As Megha admits in the Afterword, "I began this book thinking it was about a company. It turned out to be about a person." That's because it is often hard to separate a founder from his creation. Deepinder has had many intense professional relationships, most of which finally burnt out. His top team has always been in a churn.

I have only one grudge: I wish the book had been called 'Relentless' or 'Unbroken' or some such. Or 'Brutal', perhaps? :) Because if Deepinder is tough on everyone around him, he is equally hard on himself. As one of his long-time investors, Temasek's Vishesh Shrivastav, tells the author, 'When it comes to intellectual honesty, Deepinder 'is a benchmark'.

Exceptional job Megha.