Deepinder Goyal enters billionaire club as his holding in Zomato crosses $1 Bn worth

Deepinder Goyal, founder and CEO of Zomato, has entered the billionaire dollar club as the value of his holdings in the foodtech firm surpassed Rs 8,400 crore.

With this, Goyal joins the ranks of Sachin and Binny Bansal, Nikhil and Nitin Kamath, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Byju’s Reveendran, and Ritesh Agarwal who hit a similar high at some point with their startups’ growth and valuation.

As of March 31, 2024, Goyal owned a 4.19% stake in Zomato and had 36,94,71,500 shares. Since the Info Edge-backed firm recently hit its all time high share price ~Rs 232, the value of his personal holding crossed $1 billion.

Zomato currently has a market capitalization of Rs 2,01,343 crore or $24.25 billion (as of 11.27 AM IST on July 15). With 36,94,71,500 equity shares, Deepinder Goyal's holdings are valued at Rs 8,423 crore ($1.01 billion), as per Entrackr’s estimate.

Food tech major also received shareholder approval to implement a new ESOP plan 2024 valued at $458 million. With the implementation of its new ESOP plan, the company’s total ESOP value surpassed $800 million. After Flipkart, Zomato seems to have the largest ESOP pool at the moment in the startup arena. In 2021, Oyo’s ESOP pool was worth close to $1 billion followed by Paytm, Nykaa and Policybazaar. 

However, value of Oyo and Paytm’s ESOP pool has nosedived since then in the wake of colossal loss in their valuations.

While the holdings of bootstrapped startup’s founders such as Kamath brothers and Sridhar Vembu fortune are estimated to exceed $1 billion, Goyal has turned out to be the new entrant in the billionaire club from the VC-backed ecosystem.

The good times for Zomato have continued on the stock exchange despite the company increasing its platform fees to Rs 6 in Delhi and Bengaluru.

The company introduced a platform fee of Rs 2 in August last year, which was increased to Rs 5 in April, and now stands at Rs 6 per order as the firm looks to improve margin. Swiggy also spiked its platform fee to Rs 6 in the two cities.

Zomato showed a robust growth in the last fiscal year (FY24) as its revenue from operations surged 71% year-on-year to Rs 12,114 crore in FY24 from Rs 7,079 crore in FY22. Moreover, the profits of the company stood at Rs 351 crore in FY24 as compared to a loss of Rs 971 crore in FY23.