Why the one of the most promising start up “Askmebazaar” failed

In 1990, when India was going on financial crisis, govt. did not have money to run the country. Then govt. understood if there will be less businessman in the country, then the scenario will never change.

Thus the born of SME happens. SME means small and medium enterprises. Some of these SME like Reliance and Infosys become very large. But many companies did not sustain in the market. Askmebazaar which was 5000 crore rupess start up, it failed miserably.

Birth of ASKMEBAZAAR

In 2010, when there were not opportunity to search various options online. The birth of askmebazaar happened to fulfil the gap. This askme.com was started by network18. It was growing by the phenomenal growth of 120 percent every year.

Expansion

This growth was exploded when getit infomedia acquire askme. The revenue increased from 23 crore in 2013, that become more than 50 crore rupees in next year. It became fastest growing start up of that time. 

Start of Ending

This overnight success did not stay for long. All of the employees of Askmebazaar  get an email on 26 th august, 2016 from their management that they are shut downing their business. More than 4000 employees become jobless in a night.

Mostly focused on Marketing

Let us know the reasons of the downfall of the company. Askmebazaar started their ecommerce business like Amazon and Flipkart. Due to high marketing they are getting lakhs of order. But they could not manage to track everything on time. Some sellers did not get their payment. Customers were not getting refund. Logistics company also did not get their payment on time.

You may ask why it happens. One of the reason is they used to follow all the work in excel sheets not an advanced software. 

Poor Business Management

If you watched the ad of askmebazaar you will remember their ad was superbly attractive. But if you visited their website it will look like poorly managed site. You would wonder how they get so much traffic in such websites. The reason is their marketing team. Most of their founder were from marketing team. They got millions of traffic, huge portfolio and large geographical customers but could not handle them properly.

Entered in many business

Askmebazaar entered in various fields that time. They had askme.com for local search. They had askmebazaar.com for online ecommerce portal. They had askme furniture which they extended by acquiring Mebelkart in 20 million dollars. They had ask me grocery which they expanded with acquiring best at lowest in 10 million dollars. They had ask me pay by which payments happen. They even had Ask Me Fin which was a fintech portal.

In paper it was sounding great. But to manage all of this they have to burn a lot of money. The losses which was 50 crores in 2013, that become 300 crores in 2015. When their parent Astro company stopped the funding, it completely destroyed. 

All of these become the reason of the failure of askme.com which was once one of the fastest growing company in India.

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