'Spent $30 million, including $20 million of my own': Deepinder Goyal responds to doctors questioning Temple

Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal on Thursday defended his ₹85,000 Temple wearable against criticism from doctors. He said the company has invested $30 million in developing the device, including $20 million of his own money.

In a lengthy post on X addressed to "Concerned Indian Doctors", Goyal rejected suggestions that Temple was a scam and said the company stood by its scientific claims.

"First and foremost, a business lesson: if Temple were a scam, and any of what we said weren't true, people would know it in just a few days of using Temple," he said.

"We have 14-day, no-questions-asked returns (which even Apple doesn't offer in India). If the product doesn't work, it fails out of the gate and the company dies before recovering a tenth of its R&D."

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Goyal said Temple had already received substantial investment and that selling a few thousand devices would recover only a small portion of the money spent.

"We have already spent $30m building Temple, $20m out of which is my own money. Selling a few thousand devices recovers a small fraction of this investment. A scam that pays nothing is not a scam anyone would run," he said.

He also pointed to his decision to step down as Eternal CEO to focus on Temple.

"I left the Eternal CEO role to chase purpose with Temple. This is not about money. I have enough of it to last for generations. My incentives are fully aligned with getting the science right. I am not staking a reputation earned over 20 years on making a quick buck."

The response comes after doctors, including hepatologist Dr Cyriac Abby Philips, popularly known as The Liver Doc, questioned Temple's scientific claims and clinical usefulness.

The device, which opened for pre-orders on November 1, is designed to monitor physiological signals associated with blood flow and other health metrics.

Earlier this week, Goyal claimed that Temple had outperformed several leading wearables in heart-rate accuracy testing. However, the study was funded and conducted by Temple and had not undergone peer review.

The Temple CEO said independent research would follow and argued that wearable technology companies often introduce products before publishing external validation studies.

"We hold ourselves to a higher standard; pre-prints are a step prior to peer-reviewed publications, and they are coming up," he stated.

"We are confident that we are building something that the world is going to be positively astonished with. We stand by our science and our methods," he added.

Goyal also claimed that Temple had features yet to be announced.

"Last but not the least, the most ground breaking features in Temple are not even public yet. And some of them, thankfully, have nothing to do with doctors."