Hey everyone, it's been so long!
Life has been busy and very tough; unfortunately we are going to have to close down Swapzaar.
Swapzaar in it's current avatar simply isn't working.
It was a great idea, but we don't have the funds to scale the business.
We also couldn't raise funds - we failed to convince investors that Swapzaar was an idea worth investing in!!
:-(
Of course, when we had to face facts back in December 2016 we were really heart-broken, angry and sad because we felt so many useless startups got easily funded when the boom time was on (2012/2013/2014) and just when we started looking for funds everything just came crashing down...but then as we looked around we realised- maybe it was a blessing in disguise.As you might have read, the funding scenario in India is undergoing some tectonic changes.
These large changes started in 2015, right around the time we started looking for funds, and are still happening! (Flipkart, Snapdeal, Ola and may more are under scrutiny and are being evaluated for soundness and their valuations are being slashed). Investors are wary of investing in new startups in the eCommerce space given that these large giants have failed to pay off as expected. It's always a bad idea to get a jittery investor on-board who doesn't really get your idea/vision and just wants 50X returns ASAP.
It's not a wasted effort; it's been an incredible journey of 5 years (this June we'll be officially 5) since we registered the company, and started building Swapzaar.
We have learnt so much along the way (mostly what not to do).
On the bright side, we founders are now free to move on with our other projects; there are some other fashion related business ideas we have wanted to explore in the past; we might try those- who knows?
But the overall focus on fashion stays; and we might even get back to vintage and pre-owned luxury fashion at some point...we don't know.
Meanwhile we will also stop posting on this blog regularly.
We might put up a mini fashion-related post once in a while till we are ready to totally close it down.
Thanks for your love and support; if and when we start something new we shall definitely post it here!
The future is wide open.
