Deepinder Goyal's Temple gets thumbs-up from Unacademy co-founder Gaurav Munjal: ‘True potential’
Unacademy co-founder Gaurav Munjal has shared a largely positive review of Temple, the wearable device developed by Zomato founder and Eternal Vice-Chairman Deepinder Goyal, praising its lightweight design, sleep tracking and food-monitoring capabilities.
Munjal said the product had the potential to become a global brand built in India, while pointing out that its app interface could be improved.
In a post on X on Thursday, November 5, Munjal stated he had used Temple intermittently over the past few weeks and was impressed by several of its features.
"I think it has true potential to be a global product built out of India (we do need great global products from India apart from just Haldiram’s Bhujia)," he wrote.
Munjal described Temple as an extremely lightweight device, saying he had initially worried about feeling its presence on his head. However, he said he often forgot he was wearing it unless someone else pointed it out.
He also lauded how securely the device stayed in place during sleep and workouts. Based on his experience of using it over 30–40 nights, he said it had come off only once.
Comparing it with Whoop, another wearable device, Munjal said Temple was more comfortable to wear while sleeping.
"In fact Whoop is quite irritating during sleep / I don’t feel the presence of Temple at all," he wrote.
Food tracking was another feature that stood out for him. Munjal said Temple's ability to capture chewing and send reminders after meals made its food-tracking function better than other apps he had used.
"Food Tracking Feature is better than any app out there / no other device can capture chewing / it sent a nudge after every meal / love this," he said.
He also appreciated the device's Entropy and Brain Flow features, along with its sleep-tracking capabilities.
Despite his positive assessment, Munjal identified a couple of areas where the product could improve.
He said people frequently asked him about the device, leading him to spend part of his meetings explaining what Temple was. However, he expected this to change as the product became more widely known.
His other criticism concerned the user experience of the accompanying application.
"Whoop App has better UI and UX," Munjal wrote, indicating that Temple's app interface and experience had room for improvement.
Munjal's review came in response to a post by Goyal, who addressed criticism from doctors and other users on X over Temple's claims and scientific validation.
Goyal defended the product, arguing that customers could assess its performance through a 14-day return policy. He said the company had already invested $30 million in developing Temple, including $20 million from his personal funds.
"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," Goyal wrote.
He also said that he had left his role as Eternal CEO to focus on Temple and maintained that his motivation was not financial.
On the question of scientific validation, Goyal said Temple was working towards greater public scrutiny of its claims and that preprints were forthcoming before peer-reviewed publications.
"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," he said.
Goyal added that some of Temple's most significant features had not yet been made public, suggesting that the device's capabilities could extend beyond those currently available.
Garvit Bhirani is a journalist based in Gurugram. He is a Deputy Chief Content Producer at LiveMint, where he covers national and international news stories, focusing on accuracy and compelling storytelling for readers. <br><br> With a total of six years of experience in journalism, he has previously worked with Vaco Binary Semantics for Google, taking on the role of news curation lead, and reported from the field on health, education, and agriculture stories for 101reporters and News9. He has also served as a content editor for entertainment and news media organisations. <br><br> Garvit holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism and mass communication from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University and Gurugram University, respectively. During college days, he joined India’s only non-profit student journalism network, where he anchored daily news updates and produced his own weekly show called ‘Data Fix’. <br><br> He was selected for the YES Foundation Media for Social Change Fellowship in Delhi, the Talking Data to the Fourth Pillar residential workshop, and the VOICE Fellowship in Pune. <br><br> He holds certificates in COVID-19-verification reporting, data journalism, food & agriculture, tech policy, media literacy and countering misinformation, and tackling election disinformation courses from Thomson Foundation, IndiaSpend, The Dialogue, US Mission in India, and AFP. <br><br> He can be reached on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/garvit-bhirani">LinkedIn</a> or on <a href="https://x.com/GarvitBhirani">@garvitbhirani</a> on X
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