Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal 'kicked out' of Swiggy-sponsored Shark Tank: Report

Shark Tank India 4 is soon going to be aired on Sony TV and will see the return of Anupam Mittal of People Group, Aman Gupta of boAt Lifestyle, Namita Thapar of Emcure Pharmaceuticals, Peyush Bansal of Lenskart and Ritesh Agarwal of OYO as sharks. However, Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal will not be among the judges this time round.

Sponsored by IPO-bound Swiggy, the food delivery company's deal for sponsorship included the removal of Goyal from the reality show.

As per a report in The Economic Times, Swiggy, the direct rival of Zomato is sponsoring an approximate sum of Rs 25 crore. This was also later confirmed by Goyal.

"I just went there to set a different narrative, be real, and change how people perceive how a startup should be built," the Zomato CEO said adding that he will not be going back to the show because he got "kicked out".

"I felt it was my moral obligation to go there once... but I, unfortunately, can’t go back because Swiggy sponsored Shark Tank this time and kicked me out, at least that’s what I heard,” the publication quoted him as saying.

Meanwhile, SoftBank-backed Indian food delivery company Swiggy has made headlines lately after it received shareholders' approval to use a provision that will allow it to increase the size of fresh issue in its IPO to 50 billion rupees ($595 million) from 37.5 billion rupees, people aware of the matter told Reuters on Thursday.

Swiggy's existing shareholders will sell shares worth 66.64 billion rupees, which remains unchanged.

With the increase of the fresh issue, its initial public offering size will increase to $1.4 billion from $1.25 billion. Swiggy's original IPO size eked out NTPC Green Energy's $1.2 billion public offering filing to be the largest in the country this year.

Meanwhile, the Zomato CEO was all over social media today after he and his wife rode around Gurugram delivering orders.

(With Reuters inputs)