‘Too much traffic’: Deepinder Goyal’s ₹85,000 Temple website crashes briefly minutes after pre-orders open

The official website of Temple, the ₹85,000 brain-health wearable backed by Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal, briefly crashed on November 1 shortly after pre-orders opened in India. The website faced a surge in traffic as users rushed to book the device.

The booking window for the wearable opened for Indian consumers on November 1 at 9:30 pm. However, several users reported brief access issues as early adopters rushed to secure their orders.

Goyal soon acknowledged the issue in a post on X, writing, “Too much traffic on temple.com - we are trying to get on top of it. Orders are working on the app though.”

Responding to an X user who pointed out that app traffic alone would not help if the website continued to experience problems, Goyal admitted that the company had underestimated the demand.

“Let’s see. We under-estimated the traffic, and we don’t have auto scale. Rookie mistake,” he wrote.

Temple is a head-worn wellness wearable developed under a private health-tech initiative backed by Goyal. Unlike conventional fitness trackers and smartwatches, which are worn on the wrist, the device is attached to the side of the head near the temple using a medical-grade adhesive grip.

Several well-known personalities have been spotted wearing the Temple device, including badminton player PV Sindhu and cricketer Shubman Gill.

What does the Temple wearable do?

The device is designed to monitor changes related to blood flow in the brain. The device uses a system called BrainFlow, which is intended to collect signals from tissue and blood vessels around the temple.

Temple also tracks a metric called Entropy, which Goyal describes as a real-time measure of the body's "cost of being alive". The score is updated every second and can change depending on factors such as sleep, stress, exercise, caffeine consumption and meditation. It ranges from 1 to 250, with lower scores indicating rest and higher scores reflecting greater physical activity.

(Also Read: Deepinder Goyal says his 'Zomato guy' reputation works against his new health-tech venture Temple)

Temple price and delivery details

Temple comes with a premium price tag of ₹85,000 in India. According to Goyal, each device will be handmade after an order is placed and delivered within three months of purchase.

The device comes in six colours: True Gold, Rose Gold, Black Mirror, Real Jade, Deep Blue and Purple Funk. Customers can download the Temple app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store and complete the initial setup before proceeding with the purchase.