bluegape.com is Fan Merchandising business started by three undergrads from dorm rooms of IIT Kanpur. Company is doing great (profitable) with just seedfunding of INR 10 Lakhs from Times Internet Ltd. Founders just graduated 8 months back and now running the complete show with team size of 20+. bluegape has a strong team with a strong vision. Idea is to build a company where people can find Fan Merchandising of the Brands they love. In U.S., it’s pretty easy to find merchandise of Google, Zynga or Harry Porter but In India it’s not very easy to find Fan Merchandise of CCD, Games2Win or DDLJ. Bluegape is trying to fill that gap between brand and people who want to flaunt with brand’s Fan Merchandise.
SeventyMM.com, the online movie rental business which later diversified into full fledged e-commerce business seems to be shutting down. The Bangalore based company has raised around $21.4 Million from from NEA-Indo US Ventures, Matrix Partners India, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and ePlanet Ventures. Last month, the company lost its Chief Executive Officer Mudit Khosla to Naspers backed marketplace Tradus. Recently there’s a news that SeventyMM is likely to SHUT its operations.
Customers for bluegape are people who are religious Fan of something and want to buy merchandise of what they love. Movies merchandise is a big category for bluegape. Movie freak people are well defined customers of SeventyMM. SeventyMM was a biggest (first) movie rental company of India. SeventyMM also got rights for merchandise of some big movie brands
bluegape can bring a great team on board and SeventyMM will bring a big user base, brands on board. bluegape has strong technology to make customized products on lines of Zazzle. Fan Merchandising with customization is still a niche vertical in India.
Fan Merchandising is a $60 billion industry in India. It’s a high margin business and no inventory model at bluegape. bluegape has a low operational cost so there’s in no urgent need to raise Big VC money to scale the business. There’s still no big player in the customization business. More brands + technology is a answer to scale the business. Atleast this will be a one those merger of E-Commerce Industry which is not driven by VC pressure but because of synergies.
Can anyone of help me in getting tough with people at SeventyMM? I am at @sbaghla
Harsh Bhatia
You can find their CEO on Linkedin, I know their supply chain head. But I guess it’s too late now, isn’t it ?
Sahil Baghla
Their CEO is not responding to any media queries. It’s never too late 🙂
Khizar
I dont understand how they can put INR 100 crores of funding and so many people’s life associated with it at stake.
Seriously shutting down is not an answer.
You should get connected to the funding team at seventymm and propose to them…. what say ?
And surely its never too late…
Harsh Bhatia
Late to contact the CEO but not the investors 🙂
Gourav Das
There are so many investors. Would you happen to know the one that might be taking the final decisions. If I could know that specific investor it would help me a lot.
Disclaimer: I have been trying for last 1 month to get in touch with their Execs (CXOs) for business partnership with our product. No one’s responding. So I am kinda desperate to get in touch with them.
Ashwin C Parulkar
I think you should do your own venture, why entangled with them… Besides 70mm there are some hard board decisions as far as investors concern, and it’s futile to go after them
At the most you can propose a buy out at thrown away price ,the way people do it in US
Bharat Agrawal
Sahil,
I kind of agree with Ashwin.
I think its futile to Join investors or CXO of 70MM. Its better to make buyout of 70MM from existing investors at cheap valuation and build the business from there. I agree that 70MM is better known brand from bluegape.
Ashwin C Parulkar
Hard facts are
70 mm is dead brand by now, and if you buy it it will consume your lot of effort and money to revive it with new promise and positioning.
Buy out is also after paying off all the dues,liabilities,losses and Debt is it WORTH TAKING for you, or your new investors?
This is like buying kingfisher
It will be as if hanging with a person who is drowning,revival of such companies is a tough task and left with seasoned turnaround specialists
If you are lucky enough to get in touch in time you can propose them BUYING OUT THE NAME 70mm which
You would get it at thrown away price.
Pankaj Sikka
Dear Sahil,
What are you more interested in – getting the customer base of 70mm or to get the rights they had for the movie merchandise.
If the movie merchandise – 70mm had some direct rights but most of the products were procured from other companies which have the rights to specific categories in specific brands (read movies) You can do reach out to such companies and sell this merchandise on-line as others such as myntra / flipkart / jobong.
Let me know case you want some of the same merchandise.
Cheers – Pankaj
pankajsikka@gmail.com