Deepinder Goyal reveals he asked Albinder Dhindsa to leave twice after Blinkit takeover: ‘He was not…’

Deepinder Goyal, founder and CEO of Eternal, which owns food delivery platform Zomato and Blinkit, has revealed that he had at a point asked the q-comm platform's founder and CEO to quit his job.

In a interaction with podcaster Raj Shamani, Deepinder Goyal addressed the potential conflict that rose from Zomato's 2022 acquisition of Blinkit.

“We were very objective in what we were doing. I was even at a point of asking Albi (Dhindsa) to leave because he was not the right leader for the organisation…,” the Eternal CEO said in the podcast.

Blinkit, originally called Grofers, was taken over by Zomato in 2022. It was founded by Albinder Dhindsa in 2014, who had tried out multiple models in grocery delivery.

Grofers primarily worked on the next-day delivery model when Zomato acquired it for around ₹4,447 crore in an all-stock deal.

Following the acquisition, Zomato faced a lot of criticism over the pricing of the transaction and Goyal's conflict of interest arising from his close ties with Dhindsa, who he knew from school.

During this time, Grofers, now known as Blinkit, was also transitioning to the 10-minute delivery model.

It was during this time Deepinder Goyal and Albinder Dhindsa started having issues, when the Zomato boss told him to leave the company.

“I told him you will not be able to cut it. He said okay, this happened twice during that timeframe, and we started the transition,” Goyal said.

Hitting the rock bottom

Deepinder Goyal called this style of coaching the ‘rock bottom’.

“All of us have this armour. And when patient coaching runs out, I penetrate this armour. Me being angry is also because I care,” he said.

He revealed that he tries the ‘rock bottom’ method with people who he thinks have potential but are not being able to move forward.

“I call this rock bottom, where I hurt people like their self-confidence completely goes for a toss. I do this with people who have insane potential, but something in their head is coming in their way. Over time, the success rate of this is four out of five, where they come out of it.”

Zomato's Binkit bet

Even though Zomato's acquisition of Blinkit drew a lot of negative attention, the companies over the year worked together to establish Blinkit as one of the leading players in the quick commerce industry.

“I had never personally experienced a service, which was as addictive as Blinkit. The kind of convenience that we were getting was crazy. I knew this would become a business and people would love it,” Deepinder Goyal said, talking about the acquisition.

The stock of Zomato fell around 75% following the Blinkit deal. Today, the company is Eternal's largest business in terms of net order value.