A little more than 10 years ago, on the 26th of January 2008 (also my birthday), I thought it was a perfect day to turn live a website that I was working on for about 2 months. Back then, it was called foodlet.in; in a few days that website got renamed to foodiebay.com (domain names should always be .com – just because). (and for everyone who doesn’t know this – foodiebay.com eventually became zomato.com)

Back then, I worked on the website on the weekends along with my wife, and her younger sister. We used to drive around the city, collect menus from restaurants, scan them and put them online. All three of us did this outside of our regular jobs. We would get about 25 visitors everyday, and also received occasional feedback from some of these users that foodiebay was great, and scanned menus (to order food easily) were one of the best things that ever happened to them.

At this point in time, I was at Bain & Company; and I knew Pankaj because we used to play foosball during lunch time and were very competitive with each other. He was a lot better than me – and to my frustration, used to invariably beat me hands down. We only got a chance to work with each other in July 2008.

While working on a project, one day during lunch, I had the Google Analytics page for foodiebay open on my laptop. Pankaj looked at it and curiously asked me what that was. I told him that these are the traffic stats for foodiebay, and there are currently 3 people looking at foodiebay. Mockingly, he said “that’s too little; also, most of these folks must be from Bain”. I frowned. He said – “let me help”. And he changed his gtalk (remember gtalk?) status to “go check out foodiebay.com” – and within minutes there were 10 people on the website. And the daily traffic tripled. Pankaj got a huge kick out of it – and so I asked if he wants to build this with me, together (with no plan or intention of what this could eventually become). He said “yes, this is fun, let’s do this”. That day was 10th July, 2008 – the day we officially celebrate the birthday of Zomato.

For the last 10 years, Pankaj has not only been my co-founder, he has been the keeper of my conscience, my friend in good times, my support system during upheavals; he has been a brother and family to me. In the truest sense we have both grown up at Zomato – started families, grew and scaled the business beyond what we set out to accomplish, had each other’s back through the downfalls, while sharing innumerable milestones and cherished memories.

Pankaj has given both me and Zomato ten of the best years of his life (he was 22 when he started), and would now like to take time to think about what he wants to build next. Today – the time has come for me to help him realise his own dreams and aspirations, just like he once enabled me to accomplish mine. As of 31st March, Pankaj will be moving on from an active role at Zomato to focus on the next chapter in his personal journey. He will continue to be an important part of Zomato in the future as well, and keep serving on our Board of Directors.

A few hours ago, Pankaj sent this farewell email to everyone at Zomato –

I feel that Zomato builds incredibly resilient people and when they go, they should do something new on their own. Very few organisations build an individual’s character and resilience the way we do (maybe it’s a good thing that we are a hard place to work at). Over the next 20 years, I will be very proud if there are a 1000 Zoman babies (1000 startups by ex-zomans). I think we must already be 5-10% there. And I am very eagerly looking forward to see what Pankaj will build next.

So while I still do not have the words to express my gratitude to Pankaj for the faith he put in me, and the strength and support he brought to the table over the last decade, as well as the sheer brilliance of the journey we shared; all I can say is that I am wholeheartedly thankful to him for everything, and that everyone at Zomato will truly miss him, and cheer for him from the sidelines.

Going forward, we will celebrate July 10th as Pankaj Day at Zomato, and if his schedule permits, will have him host a townhall for all of Zomato – every year.

Thank you, PC, for the most phenomenal journey. Farewell and godspeed!