I don't underestimate Amazon. I don't fear them either: Zomato's Deepinder Goyal

Last Friday we hosted Deepinder Goyal, co-founder and chief executive officer of Zomato, on the second episode of The Rundown by ETtech on Clubhouse. After the interview, we took questions from members of the audience, who asked Goyal about Zomato’s international ambitions, whether he sees Amazon as a rival, and his best and worst years as a CEO. We are publishing just a few of the questions asked by audiences here.

Prashant Gulati: You decided to abandon your international ambitions. What is the future? Is it India only or [do you have] any future international ambitions?

Deepinder: In our international markets we weren't doing justice to the teams, not giving them enough time. We were not growing those businesses and markets as well as they could have grown. They were inevitably going to face a dead-end in five years. So we took the right call, I think, to just focus on India for a while.


Samidha: Does that mean you are not in any international markets now?

Deepinder: We still have 24 countries where the discovery product is running. We do remote maintenance, the content still gets refreshed and we still get traffic, but we make zero money. We don't have local teams on the ground. So we have that small window to go back. But we don't know yet what our strategy will be if at all we go back.

Gautam: Amazon is expanding its food delivery business in Bangalore. Do you think of them as competition?

Deepinder: I think whenever there's a large market, different people are going to want to pay for it. And Amazon is one of those companies. We have to just innovate faster and get better, and make sure customers choose us over anyone else. I think since we're only focused on this (food delivery) and nothing else, we have a fair shot at winning. The Amazon team has done tremendously well at so many things. I don't underestimate them. But I also don't fear them.

Anmol: What was your most fun year and the hardest year of running at Zomato?

Deepinder: At any point me you ask that question, the answer will be last year. Last year was the most fun, and the hardest.

Sanketh: If you had to start today, which market would you get into apart from foodtech?

Deepinder: We are already getting into sports and fitness. We think people should eat what they want to eat, and then they should go workout in the gym. So we actually acquired this company called Fitso last month, and we are going to invest heavily in building that up.

Don't forget to tune into The Rundown by ETtech on Clubhouse this Friday at 9 pm India time.