Deepinder Goyal defends ‘Temple’: ‘Not a scam; have spent over ₹188 crore to build the device’

Deepinder Goyal | Photo Credit: The Hindu

After days of mounting criticism on the wellness wearable device ‘Temple’, Zomato co-founder Deepinder Goyal addressed the concerns on the benefits of the device. In a post on X, Mr. Goyal said they have spent $30m building Temple, out of which $20m (or ₹188.49 crore) is his 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,” the billionaire entrepreneur mentioned in the X post on Wednesday (November 5, 2026).

What Deepinder Goyal said about ‘Temple’

The seven-pointer post by Mr. Goyal expressed the effort of doctors and employees in building ‘Temple’, insisting that the product is not about money. “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”.

Dear Concerned Indian Doctors, I see your rage against Temple on X. I have a few points to make: 1. 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. 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. 2. 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. 3. 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. 4. Our employees bought into our round a few months ago. The round we're raising now is mostly our customers. Scams don't build that cap table. 5. Most wearable companies start with internal studies. Whoop shipped its band in 2015, and the first published validation followed a few years later. We hold ourselves to a higher standard; pre-prints are a step prior to peer reviewed publications, and they are coming up. 6. At some point you have to stick your neck out and say: we believe in our science, and the product is now valuable enough for people to pay for and use. We believe we are there. More validation continues in public. 7. 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. Each of our claims is easily verifiable by individuals and institutions alike, and you will see a lot of independent studies come up on their own when the device becomes available to use. 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 🤭 Hope this addresses some or all of your concerns. If not, keep raging 😘🤗

— Deepinder Goyal (@deepigoyal) November 5, 2026

Defending the wearable brand, he mentioned in the post that if Temple were a scam, and any of what they said weren’t true, people would know it in just a few days of using the product. “Our employees bought into our round a few months ago. The round we’re raising now is mostly our customers. Scams don’t build that cap table,” the post noted.

Further, he wrote that, “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. Each of our claims is easily verifiable by individuals and institutions alike, and you will see a lot of independent studies come up on their own when the device becomes available to use”.

What is ‘Temple’ and the criticism against it?

As per the website, ‘Temple’ is a compact wellness wearable device, designed to attach to the side of the head near the temple using single-use adhesive grips. The ₹85,000 device is equipped with optical sensing technology to track signals linked to blood flow and circulation near the brain. The device monitors real-time metabolic metric called ‘Entropy’ (scaled from 1 to 250), accounting body’s energy expenditure every second.

However, in it’s runup to pre-sales, few doctors have raised concerns over the scientific evidence presented by Deepinder Goyal’s team. Majority of the claims have alleged discrepancies in the medical evidence shared by the company.

Of them, Kerala-based hepatologist Cyriac Abby Philips claimed in his post on X that the light-mounted device tracks blood in the skin and surface facial arteries, and not the brain. His post has taken a dig at Mr. Goyal, claiming the device does not measure blood flow; it merely detects when the blood flows to your face.

Published - November 06, 2026 11:37 am IST