GROUP ASSIGNMENT – STARTUP FAILURE

SUBMITTED BY:

S.NO. NAME ROLL NO.

1 Aishwar Shetty 191308
2 Bhanu Pratap Singh Rathore 191318
3 Nili Vachhani 191336
4 Shlok Pimpalkar 191349
5 Yashashvi Rastogi 191365

SUBMITTED TO:

Prof. Shahir Bhatt

Faculty, Strategy & Ent
Institute of Management
Nirma University

Date of submission: 17thDecember, 2020

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

In performing this assignment, we had to take the help and guideline of some respected
persons, who deserve my greatest gratitude. The completion of this assignment gives us
much Pleasure. We would like to show our gratitude to Prof. Shahir Bhatt for giving us a
good guideline for assignment throughout numerous consultations.

We would also thank the college Institute of Management, Nirma University and our
Director M. Mallikarjun for giving us the opportunity to work with them and for
providing us the resources needed for the project
We would also like to express our deep gratitude to all those who directly or indirectly
guided us in writing this task.

With Sincere Thanks,

Aishwar Shetty (191308)
Bhanu Pratap Singh Rathore (191318)
Nili Vachhani (191336)
Shlok Pimpalkar (191349)
Yashashvi Rastogi (191365)

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 INDEX

S.NO. TOPIC PAGE NO.

1 Acknowledgement 2
2 Startup 1(Wishberg) 4
3 Startup 2 (Area Insights Inc.)
4 Startup 3 (Jinn)
5 Conclusion

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Start-up 1
Wishberg (India)
Wishberg is a Social Media Platform and a Mobile Application which helps to connect users
from all over the world based on their wishlist.

It was started in year 2011 with the name Tyche’d but the company didn’t performed well
and after an year the company is about to shutdown, with the help of three investors the
company seen a hope of light and started again with a rebranding with the name Wishberg in
year 2012.

Wishberg lets users build, manage and track their one wish list in various categories like food,
fashion, books, movies, adventures, travel, carts and gadgets for Life! Users can put everything
that they want to buy or own in one beautiful wishlist, it’s their shopping cart for life!
Wishberg also allows users share their wishlist with friends and family. Discover what people
around them are wishing, their experiences and reviews.

These wishes help to inspire others and to connect with different users.

About the Product

The basic idea behind the product is to build a platform where users from all over the world
can share their wishes, track them, inspire by other people’s wishes. These wishes also help
them to connect with different users based on their wishlist. The wishes can be classified into
various categories such as food, fashion, books, movies, adventures, travel, carts and gadgets
this is the basic idea behind the product.

With time there are many add-on features added in the product such as Trending Wishes in
this the Trending wishes get updated every hour and are based on multiple factors - most
views, actions on wishes (that includes likes, comments, shares) and also other factors like
how many times the wish appeared in search results. Another feature added was Future
timeline in which the users can track how much they have completed their desired wishes.
Next feature was Secret Wishes in which people can add their wishes anonymously without
disclosing their identity. The users can also inspire others by one of the add-on feature which
is wishes are tracked to check which wish can help others to create new wish and help them
to inspire. Another feature was Full fill which can help to connect with different users which
can help each other to full fill their wishes. These are some of the features that were added
lately to improve the user experience on their platform.

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 Date of Start
The company was started in July, 2011with name Tyche’d later on it was rebranded as
Wishberg in 2012.

Founder Name and Background

The company was founded by two persons-

Pravin Jadhav, he was the Product Head (Ecommerce & Mobile) at Rediff.com India
Limited and Kulin Shah he was the Senior Investment Manager at Reliance Venture Asset
Management, venture capital arm of Reliance ADAG.

Primary Industry
Application Software

Business Model
The business model for Wishberg probably lies in the fact that it can become a platform
where brands and users can connect and brands can actually come to know what the
consumers aspire for. Shopmobs was one seemingly powerful feature which let users come
together and bargain with the brand collectively. The offline part of the feature didn't work
out and hence the feature was withdrawn after initial launch in Mumbai and Bangalore, but
Wishberg has always been on a constant endeavour to make it easier for users to fill up their
bucketlist and then start ticking it off. The startup business model clearly says its interest in
building product and customer engagement.

Headquarters
Its Headquarter was located in Mumbai, India.

Funding
Wishberg had raised $150,000 in seed funding from India Quotient, and Angel investors like
One97 founder and managing director Vijay Shekhar Sharma and HeadHonchos CEO Uday
Sodhi.

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 Shutdown Reason
The company was officially shutdown in year 2014 and acquired/merged by Freecharge
(Financial Software).

According to the founders of the company the reason for failure is “We set very high goals
for us when we raised our first investment in April 2013. As a startup, data is your best
friend. Reviewing those goals at the end of the year, we realised that we have trailed behind
on few of them. For us a team, we have always believed in chasing bigger dreams and not
take up smaller challenges. Keeping up with that belief, we will be sunsetting Wishberg in
coming days while we give time to our users to go through their accounts and wishes.”

But during our analysis what we think the reasons for the failure of this company are-

 Less Market Research, for India the timing for this type of product with basic features
was pretty wrong, at start people are not much interested in knowing someone else’s
wishes. Also the add-on features are attractive and if they launched it at the start only
with the help of market research they must have succeeded it.
 Not going with the mobile application first, they launched the application for this
social media platform very lately by which their more than half users gets
disappointed and lose their interest. As people don’t prefer using laptop very
frequently for such social media platform therefore they should have launched the
mobile application earlier.
 There are many social features which users can use after million followers or
engagement. The strategy of engagement is wrong here if they would have provided
these features first then the engagement would be more.
 The wishes are less personalised and less organized; the add-on feature of Future
timeline was promising and would have been promising for the company if it was
applied a little earlier and at larger level. People want to track their wishes, what extra
company can do is provide remainder to the users based on their personalised wishes.
 Lastly the lack of engagement is one of the biggest reasons of failure for the company.

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 What are the founders currently doing?
The founding team of wishberg joined the team of FreeCharge the company which acquired
it. Where the founder Pravin Jhadhav will lead efforts on Product & Growth and Kulin Shah
will lead efforts on Partnerships & Alliances.

References
 https://inc42.com/buzz/wishberg-shut-founding-team-join-
freecharge/#:~:text=Wishberg%20was%20initially%20started%20as,in%20July
%202012%20it%20was
 https://yourstory.com/2013/10/wishberg?utm_pageloadtype=scroll
 https://blog.wishberg.com/

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Start-up 3
Jinn (England)
Jinn was an on-demand delivery platform that allowed users to order anything they wish via
mobile and web applications and have it delivered to them in under an hour. Their goal was
to bring together the convenience of shopping on-line with the instant gratification of
shopping on the high street.

Date of Start
2013

Founder Name and Background

Mario Navarro – Completed his Business studies in the field of Economics from University
of Richmond – Robins School of Business

Leon Herrera - Completed his Bachelors in Economics from University of Richmond. Mr.
Herrera worked as an Intern at Garrigues before founding Jinn.

Joseba Mendevil – Studied Computers from University of Richmond before completing his
Engineering from University of Deusto. He also worked at Urbegi before founding Jinn

Category
E – Commerce

Business Model
It earned by the delivery fees that were charged on each delivery. It had also collaborated
many small and medium partners which formed as their source of income.

Headquarters
London

Funding
There were 11 investors with a total funding amount of $19.8M.

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Shutdown Reason
After flourishing for an initial few years Jinn could not cope up with the increased
competition. Apart from that there was lack of Innovativeness and adaptability in their
approach.

What are the founders currently doing?

Mario Navarro – Co-Founder and CEO at Triple- Automating Loyalty

Leon Herrera – Consultant at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

Joseba Mendevil – Back End Developer at Iwoca.

References
http://www.mydigitalstartup.net/2017/10/20/failed-startup-jinn/
https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/19/london-based-on-demand-delivery-startup-
jinn-shutters/

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 CONCLUSION
For this project we have taken three companies from different countries such as India,
England and USA. The reason for failure for companies varies as the company which have
innovative ideas (Area Insights) was not able to understand the problem correctly and was not
able to provide solution at required level, whereas the company (Jinn) which was able to
understand the right level of problem faced lack of innovativeness and lack of adaptability.
The company couldn’t deal with the level of competition and shutdown due to lack of
adaptability. Lastly the company (Wishberg) had great idea but the strategy and approach
gets wrong due to which it doesn’t able to engage its user and due to which it had to shut it
down.

Overall the in startup ecosystem what we have learned is that only having a great idea is not
gives you guarantee of success. Right approach, strategy at right time is also equally
important. The company has to build its competencies so that it can compete with its
competitors. Also the market research should be done thoroughly and according to the
requirement of consumers product has to be built like in case of Area Insights and Wishberg
lack of market research lead to failure of the company.

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