According to recent reports, the Bengaluru based social commerce startup Wooplr is shutting down after merger talks fell through.
The company’s profile indicates that the online venture was designing a Network as a
A free & easy way to start an online store, Wooplr today empowers 200,000+ store owners to earn on average Rs. 15,000 a month. In just a minute, be ready to go live with 100,000+ products from menswear, womenswear, kids, home, kitchen & more. Wooplr takes care of finding products for your store, technology, payments, delivery, and returns. Now Earn Anytime, Anywhere with Wooplr.
One of the founders and CEO of Wooplr, Arjun Abraham Zacharia had blogged
Millennials want to be entrepreneurs. They want to own something that defines them. They are extremely aware of their capabilities and they are getting the freedom to explore that. The idea of this ‘CEO of the Month’ contest is to help youngsters harness the power within them. That was the idea behind this. We wanted GenY to take control of their lives and we see Wooplr as a medium to do this.
According to the company’s LinkedIn profile, it had 335 employees working at the startup. Since April, Wooplr had made massive job cuts — primarily operational roles and those in cataloguing division, while holding on to its core leadership team.
Wooplr had raised $14 Million in funding with a recent Series B round of $8Mn led by Sistema Asia Fund with participation by Series-A lead VC Helion Ventures and Amereus Group. In addition it had several strategic investments from industry leaders – Naveen Tewari (CEO Inmobi), Anand Chandrasekaran (Head-Facebook Messenger), Jaspreet Bindra, Abhay Singhal, Amit Gupta, Piyush Shah, Raghunandan G (Co-founder – Taxi for Sure), and ex-Puma India CEO Rajiv Mehta.
Wooplr had been struggling to find investors shut down operations due to the lack of sufficient capital. According to media sources, the startup had reached out to commerce platforms Limeroad, Snapdeal, and Club Factory for an exit. Those deals didn’t come through and the venture had to be shut.