Zomato Mulls A New Group Identity - Eternal

Deepinder Goyal, the Zomato founder and CEO, has proposed a new brand and vision for the meal delivery company, even as its shares saw huge sell-off pressure last week.

Goyal's statement, which was released recently, was written after shareholders approved its acquisition of Blinkit, a grocery delivery service formerly known as Grofers. "Now that the Zomato-Blinkit merger has been approved, we have three firms in order of business size/impact: Zomato, Blinkit, and Hyperpure. We also have Feeding India in addition to these three. We are now at a point in our lives when we are transitioning from running (more or less) a single business to running numerous major businesses "Goyal stated in the message.

"We are transitioning from a company where I was the CEO to a place where we will have multiple CEOs running each of our businesses, all acting as peers to each other, and working as a super team with each other towards building a single large and seamless organisation. Starting today, we are going to call this larger organisation Eternal," he added.
 

Eternal, according to Goyal, is a goal statement in and of itself since it denotes forever, something that will last for more than a few lifetimes.
"Eternal can be described in a variety of ways, including boundless, timeless, undying, limitless, and forever. Eternal will have a number of enterprises, including Zomato (delivery and dining out), BLinkit, Hyperpure, and Feeding India. For the time being, Eternal will remain an internal moniker; you should start seeing the Eternal logo in a few spots around our new workplace. In addition to t-shirts," he added.

To be sure, sources say this was one of many suggestions Goyal discussed on the company's Slack channel, and it's unclear whether it will be implemented. However, the advertising reveals Goyal's thinking, as Zomato increasingly seeks to emulate one of its early investors and major owners, Info Edge. A group firm with a diverse set of commercial activities.

It has already begun to move in this direction, having made financial and strategic investments in a number of businesses since becoming public last year, as it tries to grow beyond meal delivery into logistics and food robotics. Aside from the $570 million acquisition of Blinkit, Zomato has made at least six minority investments totaling approximately $200 million in the last year, including $75 million in Shiprocket and $50 million each in Magicpin and Curefit.

Since the foodtech major's stock market debut in July last year, it has also invested $5 million in food robots startup Mukunda, as well as $15 million in adtech company Adonmo and $5 million in restaurant software company UrbanPiper. Online food delivery aggregator Zomato is moving to a multiple CEO structure for its businesses that will be housed under a larger organisation called Eternal.