The Bengaluru and San Francisco-based startup, which
had raised $9 million in seed funding, was founded by Anil Goteti and Mausam Bhatt.
It was offering its platform to independent professionals like lawyers, graphic designers and nutritionists to launch their businesses online, create videos, conduct live sessions, generate payment links, and track their business’ financial performance.
The company could not find the right product-market fit and the founders did not agree to pivot its business model, people briefed on the matter said.
It has completely shut operations and let go of all its employees, they said.
Goteti declined to comment.
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“Covid-19 didn’t help the startup either, but there was a point when a pivot became necessary but founders weren’t on the same page on that,” a person aware of the matter said, adding that the company has returned the full capital to investors.
The investors include Matrix Partners, 021 Capital and Tanglin Venture Partners and prominent angel investors like Binny Bansal, Flipkart chief executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Udaan co-founder Sujeet Kumar, and Kunal Shah of Cred.
Goteti, who served as senior vice president at Flipkart, left the company in November 2020. Bhatt, who is also a former Flipkart executive, previously worked with Google. The startup launched its product first in the United States and raised seed capital in July 2021. It had plans to start operations in India too.
Mumbai-based insurance startup BimaPe also shut down within its first year after it failed to reach product-fit metrics set in March 2021.
The company later pivoted to the B2B insurance business and changed its name to Verak.
Ratan Tata-backed AI-chatbot developer Niki also shut shop last year.
