What Deepinder Goyal of Zomato learnt in 2015

For Deepinder Goyal, co-founder of Zomato, the restaurant search, discovery and ordering platform , the year 2015 has been a learning one. In a blog posted by Zomato, Goyal charts out seven key things he learnt in the past year, contemplating on things that could have been done differently.

Goyal had a word of caution against scaling up too fast, stating, "We scaled massively in 2015, starting with acquiring Urbanspoon, which gave us a canvas three times larger than what we had before. Suddenly, having new competitors in these new markets meant everything had to become an equal priority. When you do that, you spread yourself thinner than you want to, and end up losing focus on what matters and what works," he said. The Gurgaon-based company had acquired US-based Urbanspoon for an estimated amount of Rs 360 crore.

Goyal further added that the outcome of scaling up rapidly resulted in increased competition. "Entering new markets and business verticals either means taking deeply entrenched competitors head-on or building something from the ground up by trying to change established user behaviour. These can both be very costly things to attempt," he said.

Emphasising that the focus for a start-up should always be on revenues, he added that one should "never take their eyes off the revenue". Also, he says that one should learn from others, who are a lot smarter and not just reinvent the wheel.

Admitting that the rapid growth affected the company's culture, Goyal said everybody has to contribute towards building and sustaining a strong culture. "We didn't drive this message hard enough in the first half of 2015. Combined with a very rapid growth in our team size, the culture at Zomato took a hit," he remarked.

He said that instead of investing more money to solve a problem, more iteration and quick execution should be the way. He added that a start-up should be tough enough to wade through the tough times.