The Venture Intelligence Blog

A TechInAsia article chronicles GoZoomo's story and its shut down:  The issues faced by the peer-to-peer used car marketplace company were: 1. Poor unit economics due to low conversions for a peer-to-peer used car marketplace - around 20%. “For instance, we are taking pictures, inspecting 100 vehicles, but at the end only 20 of these sell on our platform. Then it becomes very difficult to recover the money we have spent on all the 100 vehicles listed,” explains Arnav. 2. Need for the market to mature - in terms of accepting standardised pricing for used cars by customers In the course of the exit, the company has: 1. Returned over half of the investment amount raised (i.e. money in the bank) to its investors SAIF and DST Global.  2. Employees were given a seven-week severance package and offered help with finding placements elsewhere. “As of today, except six, all have been placed,” Arnav says. On the shut down Alok Goel, SAIF Partners shares: “The st...

A lot of pontification is flying around for TinyOwl, the food ordering startup that's landed in big trouble - much like the other young IIT Bombay alumni founded startup Housing.com. (Prior to the latest " layoffs triggered hostage crisis " at the company, one had noticed TinyOwl - apart from its remarkable back-to-back funding announcements - mainly for  a tweet on how, between cash backs from it and Paytm, one could get paid to eat!) Arvind K. Singhal, Chairman and MD of retail consulting firm Technopak, has used the goings on at TinyOwl, to ring the death-knell for startups across categories. "These incidents highlight some bitter realities about the Indian startup ecosystem, which have so far been overshadowed by the multi-billion dollar valuations of a handful of companies, and the multi-million dollar funding rounds they have done. I believe that such ugly incidents are in store for several other companies in India’s fledgling startup ecosystem. In fact, t...