Following the historical Zomato IPO and the huge response the company got from investors on the open market, the CEO of Zomato, Deepinder Goyal, wrote a letter to the company shareholders. This letter has surfaced on the same day the company lists on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). The food delivery giant and restaurant aggregator had moved up its listing date to July 23. This monumental IPO stands as one of the largest undertaken by a start-up in India to date. The public issue saw tremendous demand in the market last week, as investors oversubscribed a total of 38.25 times from its opening day on July 14, till its close date on July 16.
Over the years, Zomato has come leaps and bounds past what the founder first imagined it to be. Coming from IIT Delhi, Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah, started their careers in a consultancy firm called Bain and Co. There they witnessed piles and piles of restaurant leaflets in the office. This inspired the idea of what is now Zomato. The food delivery platform started in 2008 as a listing platform for food and restaurants under the banner, ‘Foodiebay’. By 2011 everything changed as Zomato was born and became the go-to place for restaurant searches and ratings for the masses. The company managed to raise its first bit of funding from Info Edge, which brought in their first Rs 60 lakh. Years later, the company now stands as an $8 billion industry titan in the online food delivery market.
Since its launch the company has been at the forefront of industry innovation, bringing new features to pull in customers. Now, the company is targeting a post-issue valuation of Rs 64,365 crore at the upper end of the price band which is Rs 72 to Rs 76 per equity share. It is also looking to launch its new grocery services feature on the Zomato app. The food delivery company has achieved a milestone by becoming the first Indian online company to get listed on the bourses. The Zomato stock got listed on the BSE at Rs 115. This is a 51.32 per cent premium increase over the issue price. On NSE, the stocks hit a landmark Rs 116, which is a 52.63 per cent uptake from the issue price.
Here is the complete text of the letter shared by the CEO of Zomato, Deepinder Goyal:
Letter from Deepi,
I’m a firm believer in India, and where our country will be in the future. India is a tough market to operate in, but if you are building to succeed in India, you are already exceptional. I say that because I believe Zomato and Swiggy are two of the best food delivery apps in the world today. We have a long way to go before we can call ourselves world class by our customers’ standards, but we are determined to get there.
Our 10+ year journey has not always been smooth. We have lived through many ups and downs – something not every company has the privilege of living long enough to do. I have made many decisions which have been good for the company, while some have caused our stakeholders a lot of heartburn. That said, we have found ourselves managing times of crisis on different occasions in much the same way – impatiently staying focused on the long term, executing relentlessly, and committing ourselves to doing the very best we can do today.
Even in our hardest times, we’ve had half of our tech/engineering team work on long-term initiatives. And during the good times, we double down on the long term even harder. The only short term work we do is whatever will earn us the right to continue building the future. We deeply understand that anything good and meaningful takes decades to build.
We are going to relentlessly focus on 10 years out and beyond, and are not going to alter our course for short term profits at the cost of long term success of the company. The tremendous response to our IPO gives us the confidence that the world is full of investors who appreciate the magnitude of investments we are making, and take a long term view of our business.
They say it takes a village to raise a child, and we are no exception. Hundreds of people have selflessly played a part in making Zomato what it is today. While some of them no longer work with us, the influence of Pankaj, Saurabh, Mohit Kumar, Mukund, Akshar, and so many others can still be felt at Zomato. To our investors who have stood by us through thick and thin; Sanjeev, Mohit, Vamsi, Vishesh, Eric – we thank you for your confidence in us, and we hope to live up to your expectations in the future.
Today is a big day for us. A new Day Zero. But we couldn’t have gotten here without the incredible efforts of India’s entire internet ecosystem. Jio’s prolific growth has set all of us up for unprecedented scale. Flipkart, Amazon, Ola, Uber, Paytm – have also over the years, collectively laid the railroads that are enabling companies like ours to build the India of the future. We stand proudly and humbly on the shoulders of giants, and we thank everyone for giving us, and so many other startups, the opportunity to look ahead into the future.
I don’t know whether we will succeed or fail – we will surely, like always, give it our best. But I hope that the fact that we are here, inspires millions of Indians to dream bigger than we ever have, and build something way more incredible than what we can dream of.
Deepi
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