Posted by amita gar

Watch Part 2 here: https://youtu.be/GN0BJrqzUMc In today’s video, we look at Deepinder Goyal’s journey of building Zomato – not the Zomato we all know today but this is the story of Zomato’s origins. Before it was even called Zomato, it’s the story of Foodlet and Foodiebay. 00:00 Deepinder Goyal was an awful student 01:27 From a slice of pizza to a startup idea 04:13 Beginning of an entrepreneurial journey and failure 07:00 The start and end of Foodlet 08:22 Foodlet is reborn and renamed to Foodiebay Deepinder Goyal was an awful student: As a kid, Deepinder was not very good at school. In fact, he was ranked 35th out of 36 students in the 8th standard. That was until his father talked to the principal of the school and got his marks bumped up by getting him the answers to the next exam beforehand. Thanks to this, his ranking jumped from 35th to 3rd. He even stole money from his father to continue cheating and keep his grades up. Despite all his struggles, he managed to get into one of India’s prestigious engineering colleges – IIT Delhi – which he would later call a fluke, but this fluke ended up changing his life. From a slice of pizza to a startup idea: During the end of his time at IIT Delhi, he found himself ordering a pizza from Domino’s one night, and realised how arduous the process was. Calling the restaurant to order instead of being able to order online, spelling out his address, coordinating with the delivery driver, it was annoying. But it was also the only way that people could order food in India back then. That was just for the likes of Domino’s, most other smaller restaurants in India didn’t even have a website. He had found an opportunity, a startup idea but instead of deciding to do something about it, like most college students Deepinder went on to finish his pizza, continued playing his computer game Age of Empires and went to sleep. Beginning of an entrepreneurial journey and his first failure: Even while Deepinder Goyal was at IIT Delhi, his grades were less than ideal. Due to this, most of the companies he was applying to work at, the ones he was actually excited to work for, were rejecting his applications. But he was not willing to work at a less than ideal company. Instead, he decided this was the time for him to start his entrepreneurial journey – to start a company that would bring Indian restaurants online. But after working at it, he realised that while it was nice to have a website – restaurants were really benefiting from it. See, most people didn’t even know these websites existed – so no one was ordering online. That’s when he decided to drop the idea and went back to looking for jobs. The start and end of Foodlet: While his idea failed, his experience as an entrepreneur helped him secure a job at Bain & Company in January of 2006. Three months after joining the company, he decided to launch Foodlet – a centralised platform where foodies could discover restaurants using the website’s Restaurant Finder feature, pick food items off of the restaurant's scanned menu. Even with Foodlet, he faced the same problem – no one knew that Foodlet existed. Despite scanning menus of 52 restaurants, Foodlet failed to get any significant traction and he had to drop this idea as well. Foodlet is reborn and renamed to Foodiebay: But it was not the end of Foodlet, after shutting down Foodlet, he decided to restart the website again. But this time he focussed on restaurants in and around his company – just building it out on the intranet to help out his colleagues. And it was a success. People were really loving the convenience. So, he launched the public website of Foodlet again but despite the early success on the intranet, nothing much changed on the internet. He even consulted a numerologist and changed the name from Foodlet to Foodiebay but nothing changed. Give us a like and subscribe to Backstage with Millionaires if you liked our video. Let us know what you think about this video in the comments below. Follow Backstage with Millionaires to remain updated with our latest developments. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backstagewithmillionaires/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwmillionaires/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backstagewithmillionaires/ Discord: https://discord.gg/XySGGhXKep #zomato #deepindergoyal #backstagewithmillionaires