When Losses Don’t Matter: The Zomato IPO
India’s food delivery market has undergone a remarkable transformation over the past decade, evolving from a fragmented ecosystem of local restaurants and phone-based ordering into a highly digitized, venture capital–driven industry dominated by a few major platforms. At the center of this transformation are Zomato and Swiggy, whose rise reflects not only entrepreneurial ambition but also a broader shift in how markets value growth, scale, and technological disruption over immediate profitability. The story of Zomato begins in 2008, when Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah launched a simple restaurant discovery platform initially known as Foodiebay. At its core, the platform aimed to digitize restaurant menus and make them easily accessible to urban consumers. This seemingly modest idea quickly gained traction, driven by rising internet penetration and changing consumer habits in urban India. By 2010, the platform was rebranded as Zomato, marking the beginning of a more ambitious expans...