Weeks after stepping down as CEO of food delivery service Zomato and its parent Eternal, Indian entrepreneur Deepinder Goyal is back with a $54 million raise for mobile startup. Templepart of what the 43-year-old earlier described as a shift towards “high-risk exploration and experimentation”.
Goyal on Friday he said in a post on X that Temple had raised capital from a circle of friends and family from fellow founders and early backers of Zomato at a post-money valuation of around $190 million. More than 30 employees participated in the same assessment, he said.
Goyal is leading the funding round, followed by Steadview Capital, according to regulatory filings reviewed by TechCrunch. Other investors include Peak XV Partners, InfoEdge Ventures and Dharana Capital, along with angel investors such as Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm, Kunal Shah of CRED, Nithin Kamath and Nikhil Kamath of Zerodha, as well as current and former Eternal executives such as Akshant Goyal, Aditya Manglaup, Ranjooo, Kunal Sharma.
Goyal stepped down as CEO of Zomato and its parent, Eternal, in January, handing over the role to Albinder Dhindsa, who heads e-commerce unit Blinkit. The move marked a major transition for Goyal after nearly two decades at the helm of the food delivery company he co-founded in 2008.
Temple is one of the clearest expressions of this change. The startup focuses on building high-performance wearable gear for elite athletes, an area Goyal has described as ripe for deeper technological innovation.
During a conversation in January with podcaster Raj Shamani, Goyal is described Temple’s wearable as a sensor designed to sit on the wearer’s temple and continuously monitor cerebral blood flow.
In a separate post on X earlier Friday, Temple said aims to build what it called “the ultimate wearable for elite performance athletes,” claiming the device would measure metrics that existing wearables can’t. He also described an extensive hiring push covering embedded systems, computational neuroscience and brain-computer interface engineering.
The startup is entering an increasingly crowded and well-funded wearables market, where companies like Whoop, Oura and Garmin have spent years perfecting devices that track sleep, recovery and sports performance. Whether Temple can meaningfully differentiate its technology remains an open question.
The push into Temple is part of a broader shift in Goyal’s investment focus. In October 2025 he said he had allocated $25 million of his own fund in another new venture, Continue Research, which explores ways to extend human life. He is also the co-founder of aerospace startup LAT Aerospace, which recently expanded into defense technology with the acquisition of seed-stage company Sharang Shakti.
Goyal built his reputation at Zomato, which he co-founded with Pankaj Chaddah, and spent nearly two decades building one of India’s largest food delivery platforms before stepping down as CEO earlier this year.
Chaddah left the company in 2018 as Zomato continued to consolidate its position through acquisitions, including buying Uber Eats’ India business in 2020 and grocery delivery platform Blinkit – then known as Grofers – for $568 million in 2022.
Before Temple, Goyal had also backed health and fitness startups, including Ultrahuman, an India-based wearable maker that competes with Oura’s smart ring, underscoring its growing focus on performance and health technology.
Goyal declined to comment further on Temple.
