Deepinder Goyal (File photo)
In it, Goyal argued that a scam would not survive Temple’s 14-day, no-questions-asked return window, a policy he said even Apple does not offer in India. Temple has cost $30 million to build so far, $20 million of it his own money, and a few thousand units sold would recover only a small part of that. On the science, Goyal pointed to Whoop, which shipped its band in 2015 and published validation years later. Pre-orders are open, and Temple 01 is set to ship in early 2027.
Because it would not get them views, in his view, they would not pile on a first-time founder building the same product,. He signed off with Diwali greetings and a nudge to “keep building.
“I should not have bucketed all Indian doctors into one single box,” Goyal wrote, adding that Temple works with many doctors and that his elder brother is one of them. Goyal said his frustration was aimed at “a few influencer doctors, who are more influencers than doctors. The apology walks back the tone of a seven-point note titled “Dear Concerned Indian Doctors”, posted the previous night. Temple, he said, will release pre-prints ahead of peer-reviewed papers. Goyal calls this “roomdeaf” audio. In a separate vision note, Goyal said he stepped away from the CEO role at Eternal, Zomato’s parent company, to build Temple full-time.
Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal has apologised to Indian doctors, hours after a combative post on X in which he addressed them collectively over criticism of his new health wearable, Temple. He accused them of skipping Temple’s research and spreading twisted facts to call the device a scam. He also put numbers on the table. Employees bought into a funding round a few months ago, and the current round is mostly made up of customers, he wrote. The note closed with: “If not, keep raging. Temple is a small, bean-shaped device that sits near the superficial temporal artery, held in place by medical-grade tapes the company calls Grips. It tracks heart rate, HRV, sleep and VO2max, and adds its own metric called Entropy, which measures how hard the body works to shed heat. Resting Entropy and Entropy Max combine into a single score called Span. It also works as a voice AI companion without a microphone. Motion sensors read the vibrations of the wearer’s voice and convert them to text, so the room around them is never picked up. A double tap wakes it, and it needs charging once a week.
Earlier this year, an AIIMS Delhi physician-scientist called Temple a “fancy toy” after Goyal wore it on a podcast. At the time, Goyal said the device was not yet for sale and that the science would be detailed if and when it was. This is not the first time the device has drawn medical scepticism.
That moment has now arrived, and doctors’ main ask remains peer-reviewed data. Goyal maintains that each of Temple’s claims can be verified, and that independent studies will follow once the device reaches users. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.