Bangalore Based Fashion Etailer Fashionara Shuts Down Operations

 

Bangalore based fashion etailer, Fashionara, has shut down its operations. The company was founded by former Reliance Trends CEO Arun Sirdeshmukh along with Darpan Munjal, former chief technology officer at Times Internet Ltd, in 2012.

The company’s website is not working since last week and there has been hardly any update on the social media channels from a couple of days except from the automated scheduled tweets.

Co-founder Darpan Munjal had left the company in January this year, as confirmed by him. He is currently operating Squadhelp.com, a Crowdsourcing platform helping startups and businesses across the globe building memorable brands.

The company was backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Helion Venture Partners, and had raised over $4 Mn Series A. There were also news about the startup raising $7-8 Mn in year 2014 and shifting to a marketplace model from being a pure-play fashion portal.

Messages sent to Arun did not elicit any response, however, in an emailed response, Bejul Somaia of Lightspeed said, “Lightspeed exited its position some time back and are no longer an investor so we can’t comment on your email. Suggest you contact the company directly.”

The company’s net sales jumped five-fold to INR 32.86 Cr. in the financial year 2014-15. But its net loss widened to INR 32.13 Cr. from INR 21.11 Cr. in 2013-14.

It had a 25,000-sft central warehousing facility in Bangalore from where it ships out the products to key cities like Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune through various air and on-the-ground logistic tie-ups.

The portal was initially focused upon categories such as apparel, footwear and accessories. In early 2014, it introduced  F.Lea Bazaar, where it enabled selected sellers from the flea markets across the country to retail their products on its portal.

Later in 2015, riding on the wave of growing smartphone and internet ecosystem of the country, it came up with its mobile android app with the flash sale model. Flash Sales implied for sale events where limited number of products are available for limited period at deep discounts. Some of the brands that can be bought on Fashionara under these events included Red Tape, Von Dutch, Biba, Clarks, Twillory, Puma, Levis and many more.

In the same year, it also entered into the home furnishing market, along with Flipkart and Snapdeal, with the launch of 36 brands, 7500 products across 7 new categories.

It was competing with portals such as Flipkart, Snapdeal, Myntra, Jabong, Koovs, etc.

AskMe Sees Exit Of 650 Employees

 

AskMe, a hyper local businesses-focused internet firm, has seen resignations from 650 people across its 40 offices in India. Most of the employees who were let go were in the annual salary bracket of Rs 2.5 lakh-Rs 6 lakh.

According to sources, the company, which is backed by Helion Venture Capital and Malaysia's Astro, is running out of funds. Reports earlier suggested that AskMe's monthly cash burn was more than $6 million.

When asked about the resignations, the company said: "It's the beginning of the new fiscal year and we continue to increase our productivity across functions through automation and better processes as in previous years. We continue to hire talent where required."

Several AskMe employees told their annual appraisals were delayed this year. "We worked hard the entire year and we are let go without the pay we deserve," said an employee.

Some of the employees in Kolkata staged a protest. However, all they could get in return was a promise that their final pay would be released within a week.

Getit Infomedia (AskMe's parent company) has promised the employees they would be given a month's salary as severance payment. Some were told that they might get another job within the group or outside.

"Astro, which holds a majority share in the company, is seemingly no longer interested in funding Getit Infomedia," said an employee who survived the job cut. The employee said the last time Astro invested over Rs 150 crore in Getit, it had to jump through hoops but since then the group company has struggled to establish a foothold in the market. Helion has not shown any interest in doing a bridge round either. "The management has been shopping for other VCs but no one has shown any interest. More resignations may follow," an employee said.

Earlier, the company officials had told Business Standard, they were trying to raise $200 million from Chinese giants Alibaba and Baidu.

One of the reasons VCs have shown no interest is AskMe could be its foray into the grocery business, a source said.

AskMe grocery has a presence in 38 cities with 23 centres in Mumbai alone. It follows the Grofers-PepperTap business model of sourcing products from local retailers.

AskMe was in hot water recently when a furniture maker accused Mebelkart, a Getit Infomedia company, of defaulting on payment of Rs 28 lakh and selling brand imitations.

Established in 1986, Getit was a print-based classifieds company. Astro had made a significant investment in the company in 2010 and again in 2014. In 2013, Getit acquired AskMe from Network18. In 2015, it made two more purchases in the form of Bestatlowest and Mebelkart.