B2B network Anar shuts down
They were backed by Elevation and Accel, had raised ~$7mn Seems like getting transactions to happen was too tough, despite building a network. Getting money out of Indian SMBs, a consistently tough model. Link to post: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/so-long-anar-farewell-reflection-nishank-jain-oifxf?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_via
Acknowledging that things arenāt working and returning capital is always the right thing to do. And it takes lots of guts.
You can still pivot with capital. But itās like youāre forcefully doing it if your heart isnāt at the right place
Last time I met him, he was far too bullish on this. Speaking literally of complete domination in the consumer tech space.
Worked in this space, really difficult to crack especially when distributors are too strong. A truly relationship driven segment.
Everyone tried becoming Alibaba, ended up becoming baba. Be it Udaan or Dealshare, everyone is struggling.
I am one of the worst critics of what he was building but props to the man.
Starting anything meaningful is hard and executing is even harder, so respect š«”
Had an interview with the engineering head last year. All questions were asked on scaling, how to decrease time of APIs . Not a standard question very tough questions and not satisfied with any answer.
I feel sad for him. Had an offer from them, but decided not to accept it.
Itachi777
Stealth
10 months ago
They were also paying very well. PM were getting 70lakh ctc
Techyuce
Stealth
10 months ago
I didn't even hear about them and am in B2B space .
FYI, SMBs are good paying clients, maybe not huge money but they will never muscle you out . They value relationship equally to value of product.
OldCost30
Stealth
10 months ago
So long Anar. You had a good run, numbers are astonishing
Business onboarded: 1.5 million; Sellers: 450k, Buyers: 1.1 million
Smurfminion
Stealth
10 months ago
Accel knew more than a year back that they'll never make money
Numbers he did not mention: Money burnt and money returned. Tbh, this linkedin post still felt like a marketing post to enable him to raise again. When I spoke with him a year ago he said they were not thinking about monetisation. That they won't think about monetisation for a year. Here we are a year later.
hellloworld
Stealth
10 months ago
The whole thesis for this company was unsustainable.
IndiaMART is already doing the same thing for the last 20 yrs and has huge huge head start.
The problem was who cares about thesis when there is free money floating in the system especially between 2019-2021.
Sad but true š¤¦āāļø
Its tough to build in this space.
Retailers hold all the power with so many options being available to them now like distributors, wholesalers, cutting wale distributors/wholesalers, new age apps like udaan, apnamart etc
You need to be transaction first. And support growth of both sellers & buyers. You cannot base your model off earning from them as in my opinion that has a certain scale limitation if unit economics need to be good. You need to make them earn rather.
We at badho are trying to build a platform where we take the contrarian approach by going no ops and transaction first. We do not charge either retailers or distributors.
StartupMinion
Stealth
10 months ago
How do you make money thenš¤
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