‘Unseen: The Untold Story of Deepinder Goyal and the Making of Zomato’ narrates the Zomato founder’s Chandigarh journey

In the summer of 1998, a lanky boy with restless eyes stepped into the National Talent Search Examination (NTSE) camp in Chandigarh. He was gleaming with hope, laced with a hint of uncertainty. The camp was an exclusive gathering of India’s brightest students, selected through a gruelling process that separated the truly exceptional from the merely gifted.

Albinder Dhindsa, fresh from Patiala in Punjab, wasn’t sure which of the two he was.

So far, this boy had grown up being the smartest kid in the room. But this wasn’t Patiala. Chandigarh was bigger, sharper and merciless in its expectations. As he walked into the NTSE classroom for the first time, he hesitated. The best seats were already taken. His gaze drifted toward the back, where an empty chair sat beside another boy who looked just as lost as he felt.

Albinder slid into the seat.

The boy turned, adjusting his backpack on his seat. He had the same air of uncertainty that Albinder carried himself. For a moment, neither spoke. Then, with an awkward smile, Albinder extended a hand.

‘Hi, I’m Albi,’ said the future founder and CEO of Blinkit. The other boy hesitated, then shook it. ‘Deepi.’ (Deepinder Goyal, the future founder of Zomato, from Muktsar).

A silent bond formed between them almost instantly, as if the universe itself had orchestrated this meeting. They didn’t know it yet but this moment would change the course of their lives and forge a life-long partnership that would one day play a defining role in shaping India’s start-up ecosystem.

After the camp, the two returned to their respective homes to take their class tenth board exams. A year later, they reunited in Chandigarh to complete the last two years of high school at DAV College.

It didn’t take long for Albi and Deepi to become inseparable. They were both chosen by the same coaching centre to prepare for the Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE), the holy grail of engineering aspirants.

That year, the coaching centre was more crowded than ever, with 300 enrolled students, all vying for a seat in an IIT. On the first day, the sorting began. The top performers, the creme de la creme, earned their place in the prestigious and elite A batch. Then came B, then C. By the time it reached D, the tone in the room had shifted from ambition to embarrassment.

Albi and Deepi were the last two names called for the D batch. Having barely made the cut-off to get into this coaching centre, their teachers hardly acknowledged them. They were the outliers — quite literally, as they struggled to even find seats in an already packed classroom. A teacher grabbed a couple of chairs from his office and placed them in the corridor right outside the classroom to accommodate these two. And so, the two boys who had once been among the brightest in their own towns found themselves straining their necks from outside, trying to catch a glimpse of the whiteboard, as if they were uninvited guests at an event they thought they had a ticket to.

For Albi, this was a wake-up call. For Deepi, it was something worse. It was a confirmation of every self-doubt he had ever carried.

As JEE approached, the pressure intensified and the weight of failure loomed over him. One evening, he made a decision. ‘I’m not taking JEE this year,’ he told Albi. Albi frowned. ‘Why?’ ‘I’ll take another year. Prepare properly,’ Deepi shrugged, as if it was nothing. Deepi informed his family as well and was of course met with unabashed disappointment.

But then, something strange happened. One of Deepi’s roommates was solving problems from ‘Concepts of Physics’ by HC Verma and ‘Problems in General Physics’ by IE Irodov, the two most feared physics books among aspirants. Deepi had always stayed away from them. It was too intimidating, too much effort for a subject he had convinced himself he was no good at.

One day, while his roommate was out, curiosity got the better of him. He saw a copy of ‘Concepts of Physics’ lying innocently on his roommate’s desk. He picked it up, and before he knew it — he was flipping through pages, immersed in the questions and problems it threw up. For the next few days, that’s all he did. He did not worry about ranks or results. There was no pressure, no weight of expectations from anyone.

Then, on a complete whim, Deepi decided to sit for JEE anyway. And that’s when something remarkable happened. Without overthinking, without the crushing burden of proving himself, Deepi cracked JEE, that too in his very first attempt.

So did Albi. The Dhindsa-Goyal adventures were set to continue. This time, in the hallowed halls of IIT Delhi.

Before leaving Chandigarh, Deepi’s parents made the trip to his PG (paying guest) accommodation to help him pack. Harbans Lal Goyal (his father) took one look at the state of his son’s room and let out a sigh that carried the weight of generations of exasperated fathers. As he surveyed the chaotic room, above his study table, a large poster caught Harbans’ eye. Boldly printed, it declared: ‘I was born to lead, not to be ruled.’

The words lingered with Harbans. He had always known his son had big dreams, and in truth, he secretly admired that fire in him. But as he carefully stepped over a rogue sock, another thought surfaced: before he ruled the world, maybe he should first learn to rule over his own laundry.

It was a classic father-son moment, the age-old clash between idealism and practicality. The irony wasn’t lost on Harbans. The contrast amused him, but deep down, he knew, messy or not, Deepi now had the kind of ambition that couldn’t be tidied away.

Great expectations, neatly wrapped in reluctant faith.

— Excerpted from ‘Unseen: The Untold Story of Deepinder Goyal and the Making of Zomato’ with permission from Penguin Random House