Book Review • Startups • Biography • Zomato
When I picked up Unseen, I thought I already knew the story. Zomato – the restaurant discovery site that became the food delivery giant we all use today. A “startup success” we’ve seen in headlines, on Twitter, in IPO conversations. I expected a familiar ride. But the book turned out to be less about the company… and more about the human being at the centre of it.
More Than a Startup Story
On the surface, Unseen is the story of Deepinder Goyal and the making of Zomato – how a simple idea around menus in an office cafeteria slowly grew into a platform that changed the way a whole country eats. But very quickly, it stops feeling like “a business book” and starts feeling like sitting across the table from someone who is finally being honest about what success actually costs.
The Parts That Stayed With Me
What hit me first was Deepinder’s early life – growing up in Punjab, being bullied, dealing with a stammer, and constantly living with this tag of being “average” or “not enough”. It’s easy to see the confident founder on stage and forget there was a scared boy long before that. Those school and college memories felt strangely familiar. Most of us know someone who was quietly written off by the system.
Some of us were that person.
Then there’s the origin of Zomato itself – starting as a simple, almost scrappy solution to a very ordinary
problem. No grand “vision statement” at the start. Just curiosity, frustration, and a need to make something a little better than it was. I liked that the book doesn’t pretend it was all part of some perfect masterplan. A lot of it was figuring things out on the go, improvising, fixing mistakes and then making new ones.
The Mess Behind the Milestones
The parts that stayed with me the most were not the big funding rounds or growth charts, but the moments in between – the late-night anxiety, the difficult calls, the feeling of carrying the entire company’s weight on your shoulders and still having to show up like everything is okay.
We often see founders as confident, sorted and unusually clear. In Unseen, you see self-doubt, guilt,
emotional fatigue and the weird loneliness that comes with being “the one in charge”. That’s when the book stopped being just “about Zomato” for me. It became about anyone who has ever chased
something big while silently wondering if they are built for it.
Why This Didn’t Feel Like a Typical Business Book
What I really appreciated about Megha Vishwanath’s writing is that she doesn’t glorify or condemn. She doesn’t turn Deepinder into a superhero, and she doesn’t turn the journey into a motivational speech either. She simply shows you what happened – the childhood baggage, the ambition, the mistakes, the wins, the near breakdowns – and lets you sit with it.
There are no “10 lessons for entrepreneurs” at the end. No neat framework. No moral of the story pasted on top. And honestly, that’s what makes it feel real.
What It Made Me Think About
We live in a world where startup stories are either romanticised or torn apart. You’re either a genius or a
villain, a visionary or a fraud. There’s no room for being human. Unseen gently reminds you that behind every “unicorn valuation” or “viral success story” is a person who has insecurities, blind spots, regrets and fears – just like the rest of us. It made me think about how often we look at someone’s highlight reel and forget that there’s a lot of heaviness behind it – stories that don’t fit neatly into LinkedIn posts or pitch decks.
Is This Book for You?
This is not a “how to build a startup” manual. If you’re looking for step-by-step advice or playbooks, this
isn’t that. But if you’re curious about the emotional side of building something at scale – the pressure, the trade-offs, the personal cost – then Unseen is worth your time. It’s also for you if you’ve ever felt “almost there but not quite”, or if you’ve quietly wondered whether the version of success we chase is really what we want.
Final Thoughts
I didn’t close Unseen feeling overly inspired or “pumped up”. I closed it feeling something different –
a mix of respect, empathy and a strange kind of calm.
Respect – for anyone who takes on that kind of responsibility.
Empathy – for the people we admire from a distance without knowing their weight.
Calm – because it reminded me that even the people who look sorted from the outside are figuring it out as they go.
This is not just the story of Zomato. It’s the story of a person trying to build something big while staying
true to himself – and sometimes failing at that, too.
And that honesty, more than anything else, is what stayed with me after I kept the book down.