Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal shares an internal joke - the only hurdle for their IPO is Covid-19

• Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal shared an internal joke on Twitter – the only hurdle in their road to success and for their IPO, as it seems, is the Covid-19 crisis.
• In December 2019, Goyal had said that by 2020-end the company would be profitable.
• According to reports, Zomato along with its rival Swiggy have seen a 70% drop in orders during the lockdown.

In the beginning of 2020, India’s startups had all realigned their strategies with one aim in mind – profitability and an IPO. But all of it became what is now termed as the ‘Before Coronavirus’ period. The pandemic has thrown businesses off guard as services have come to a halt and revenue is at a bare minimum, if not zero.

This seems to be on the mind of Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal. He shared an internal joke on Twitter – the only hurdle in their road to success and for their IPO, as it currently seems, is the Covid-19 crisis.


And the joke might as well be true as tables have indeed turned due to the black swan incident - corona crisis. In December 2019, Goyal had said that by 2020-end the company would be profitable.

"In a year's time, we should be a profitable company. We have been able to reduce our cash burn by around 70 per cent from what it was seven months ago," Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal told PTI.

However, the Covid-19 crisis will slow down their road to profitability. According to reports, Zomato along with its rival Swiggy saw a 70% drop in orders during the lockdown. “From a steady state of 2.5 million deliveries a day, today we are at sub 1 million orders which are marginally inching up,” an investor in the food delivery space told ET.

While Zomato has been swift to bring out its grocery initiative – Zomato Market to meet the rising demand in essential supplies, it remains to be seen what comes of it. Apart from business itself, the stock markets - which underwent a massive selloff wiping thousands of crores of investor wealth - are not ripe for any IPOs.

Though the markets have started picking up in the last few days, they are still volatile and will depend on data that will reveal the full economic impact of Covid-19 and the subsequent lockdown.

See Also:
Zomato and Swiggy both raise funds – but Swiggy leads with a higher valuation
Zomato rolls out its grocery delivery service – Zomato Market