Zomato founder defends Temple wearable as fitness tracker amid medical criticism

Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal clarified that the Temple device, a pill-shaped wearable that attaches to the side of the head, is intended as a fitness tracker and wellness tool rather than a medical device. Pre-orders began on November 1 and the company promises delivery within three months, offering a 14-day no-questions-asked return policy.

Goyal posted an open letter to Indian doctors on X, stating, "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."

He added that the company plans to publish pre-print studies as a step toward peer-reviewed validation, noting that other wearables such as Whoop released internal studies before formal publication. > "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," Goyal wrote.

Medical experts have expressed skepticism. Hepatologist Dr. Cyriac Abby Philips, known as The LiverDoc, said there is no scientific evidence supporting the device’s claims and highlighted concerns about methodology and data representation in the company's pre-print papers. Gastroenterologist Dr. Zubin Sharma thanked Goyal for acknowledging the lack of peer-reviewed clinical research.

Temple is marketed to monitor cerebral blood flow and biological strain using light-based optical sensors, producing a “biological entropy” score. Critics note that the device measures from the superficial temporal artery, which lies outside the skull, making accurate assessment of intracranial blood flow questionable. The product is not approved by medical regulatory authorities and cannot be used to diagnose or treat health conditions.