Deepinder Goyal reveals how Zomato was named: Here’s the backstory

Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal shared the interesting story behind the name of his food-delivery platform.

Goyal revealed that he initially wanted to name his company Tomato but could not do so due to a domain issue.

He made this revelation on the latest episode of the comedy show The Great Indian Kapil Show, where he appeared with his wife, Gia Goyal. The episode also featured Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy and his wife, Rajya Sabha member Sudha Murthy.

The show hosted by Kapil Sharma is currently streaming on Netflix.

Kapil Sharma questioned Deepinder Goyal over naming his company Zomato.

“We have heard potato, tomato, but what is the meaning of Zomato?” Sharma asked.

“I saw an ad where cricketers Harbhajan Singh and Sreesanth argue, saying it’s ‘Zomato’ or ‘Zomaato’. So, what’s the real story? Where did the name come from?” he added.

Goyal shared they had to change a letter from the word tomato to get the domain.

Responding to Kapil’s question, Goyal with a smile said,“This, ‘tomato’ or ‘tomaato’, whatever you want to say - we wanted that name as the dot com. We wanted 'tomato dot com,' but we didn't get that domain….so we changed the alphabet and got Zomato dot com.”

Hence, Zomato got its name due to the inability to get the desired domain name.

Zomato's marketing

Kapil Sharma also asked Goyal about the romantic app notifications of Zomato. To this,the Zomato CEO appreciated his marketing team and said, “Sometimes, my romantic messages to Gia inspire the app’s notifications,” he said.

“I give full credit to our marketing team, who took my idea of ‘building a relationship with the customer’ a bit too seriously,” Goyal added.

Deepinder Goyal and Gia Goyal's first meeting

He also shared about the time he first met his wife, Grecia Munoz from Mexico, who recently changed her name to Gia Goyal.

“I was single for a long time, my friends would set me up on dates, always advising me not to get too serious,” Goyal said.

“But when Grecia first came to Delhi, a friend called me and said, ‘There’s a girl you need to meet….make sure you meet her; you’ll end up marrying her.’

“I was intrigued, and so we met…” he added.