Just weeks after stepping down as CEO of Zomato and its parent company Eternal, Deepinder Goyal is back, this time with a bold bet on brain technology.
The 43-year-old entrepreneur has raised $54 million for his new wearable startup dubbed Temple. He described the move as part of a personal shift toward “higher-risk exploration and experimentation.”
Temple closed a friends-and-family round at a post-money valuation of about $190 million.
Goyal shared the update on X, saying the round included founder friends, early Zomato backers, and more than 30 Temple employees who invested at the same valuation.
According to TechCrunch, Goyal is leading the round, followed by Steadview Capital.
Other investors include Peak XV Partners, Info Edge Ventures, and Dharana Capital. Angel backers include Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm, Kunal Shah of CRED, and Zerodha founders Nithin and Nikhil Kamath, along with several current and former Eternal executives.
As first reported by TechCrunch, the round signals strong early backing from India’s startup ecosystem, even before Temple has launched a commercial product.
Goyal stepped down in January after nearly two decades leading Zomato, the food delivery company he co-founded in 2008 with Pankaj Chaddah.
He handed over the CEO role to Albinder Dhindsa, who heads Blinkit, Zomato’s quick-commerce arm. The move marked a major transition after building one of India’s largest consumer internet companies.
Developing high-performance wearable
The startup is developing a high-performance wearable designed for elite athletes.
Unlike common smartwatches or rings, Temple’s device is built to sit near the wearer’s temple and continuously track cerebral blood flow, according to the report.
In a January podcast conversation, Goyal explained that the goal is to understand what happens inside the brain during peak performance.
To support that vision, the company is hiring across embedded systems, computational neuroscience, and brain–computer interface engineering, technical areas that go far beyond standard fitness tracking.
Temple is also part of a broader shift in Goyal’s focus.
In October 2025, he committed $25 million of his own capital to Continue Research, a venture exploring human lifespan extension. He is also a co-founder of LAT Aerospace, an aviation startup that recently expanded into defence technology.
Before launching Temple, Goyal had already backed health-focused startups, including Ultrahuman, an India-based wearable maker competing with Oura’s smart ring.
