Share This Post

Startup

bluegape is shutting down?

Day before yesterday it was published in lot of media articles that bluegape is shutting down : NextBigWhatVCCircleMediaNamaBloomberg

Yes, we are shutting down the merchandise business completely. But we are NOT shutting down bluegape !!

We were completely innocent kids when we started Bluegape back in 2011. We still had a semester left at IIT Kanpur when TLabs gave us seed funding.

In last three years :

1)     We built a team of 50+ people

2)     Set up offices in two cities

3)     One million happy customers

4)     Profitable

5)     1Cr+ revenue every month

6)    raised multiple rounds of funding

And then we decided to destroy everything that we had built from scratch. Why did we take this extreme step? What exactly went wrong?

yourstory_bluegape_warehouse

For those who are new to Bluegape: We were a platform for designers and brands. The designs would be printed on merchandise and the designer would get royalty.

As you can see, the risks were plenty. We were innocent kids when we started Bluegape back in 2011 and with very little idea of what it takes to build big business.

Here are three big lessons that I can take with me from this journey :

Focus on your key metrics  


Every business has key metrics that they have to stay focussed on. For Facebook, that would be number of active users, average time they spend in a day on the platform and may be number of facebook pages on the platform. For Flipkart, it would be the number of transactions everyday and number of sellers/SKUs.

 

In Bluegape, those “Key Metrics” for us were number of active desginers/brands on the platform and amount of royalty they are making every month.

I am not saying that these are the only metrics that one should track. Definitely there are hundred of other metrics like Site Speed, SEO etc etc.

But if the key metrics are growing, then the business is growing. And the key metrics are those that align with the long-term vision of the company.

In our case, we got into a lot of short term opportunities because of which we lost the USP of our business and became a “Me Too” business. We increased our revenues in short-term but scalability became a challenge, because those opportunities didn’t make sense in the long-term.

The next time I build a business, I will look at “key metrics” of my business every weekend to ask myself if I am doing something that is not alligned with the long term vision.

Be ethical all the time

One can only build a great business on strong ethical grounds. Like Sachin Tendulkar always said that he played his game with honesty and never looked for shortcuts.

 

Reddit made initial users by themselves. That’s okay. Because that was a part of solving chicken and egg problem. They didn’t harm anyone.

We sometimes got unethical in business. We sold designs which we knew are under copyright. That had to backfire us.

We also did one more thing which was completely unethical. I can’t share it right now. That will stay between Bluegape and Sachin Bansal (CEO, Flipkart) till the day I will write a complete book on it.

Think Big

Two quotes that come to my mind are one by Tony Hsieh, “whatever you are thinking think bigger” and other one is that “either you solve a big problem or a small problem – it takes same amount of time.”

 

We could have built bluegape much bigger than a revenue of just a crores per month. We went on to sell the merchandise on marketplaces like Flipkart, Amazon and SnapDeal. They had big user base and we got easy transactions. But instead of becoming a niche e-commerce website, we became a seller on these marketplaces.

We were not owning the users who were buying our products on Flipkart, Amazon or SnapDeal.

Building an niche e-commerce website was a much bigger opportunity than becoming a seller on marketplaces. We got it all wrong.

When I communicated to the team that “we have come a long way forward but in wrong direction, Opportunity is not so big and challenging from here”. We had to change things drastically.

Out of them, 18 rockstars came back to me and said that they are ready to work on any pivot without salary but can’t see shutting down the brand that we made with all the love, passion, hard work, tears, emotions.

I know 100+ people personally who look at Bluegape as a successful student startup. We just can’t shut it down.

We are not going anywhere. We are just coming back with a new look.

Can you donate one tweet or fb post to spread the message that bluegape is not shutting down? Here you can donate us a tweet or fb post or both.

The post first appeared at: Yourstory 

Comments

Share This Post

7 Comments

  1. Sad to hear about it. Did read the links. these issues were bound to happen. As you correctly brought out, one has to think big and after this experience, one would always be doubly careful to cover the issues that have brought the changes.

    Copyright issue is a serious one even in India and no e-com co will ever risk their business on this. Anyways best of luck.

    this should also ring alarm bells on many other sites in the same segment selling copyrighted stuff as unique or funky designs on various products. their high flying journey is just one legit complaint away from being abruptly cut down. so need to be careful especially when livelihood of so many are at stake.

    best wishes on your next venture

    Sanchita (Co-Owner, http://www.indiacod.com, Mobile Accessories Specialist)

  2. Read your posts elsewhere, before seeing it here Sahil

    I Remember how you guys did the Merchandise for Dhoom 3  !!!

    No wonder then your Silence on the Reference given from my end to Look into for someones Similar Requirement some time back! You have your Faithful to move on Full Power.

    Every Big Problem, is a Big Opportunity!!!

    How will you choose your next project?
    After you make a list, after you’ve exhaustively chronicled your options, will you choose: easy, cheap, proven, brave, certain, big payoff, fun, convenient, known, unknown, important, urgent, challenging…
    There is no perfect answer, but knowing which way your compass points (and saying it out loud) is the best way to move forward. Seth Godin~

    Onto the Next, in the New AVATAR – Good Luck!!!

  3. Good Luck Bro.. Defientely waiting to See ‘The New Blue filling The GAPE’ (BlueGape)

  4. The only thing which comes in my mind is that if you are making a revenue of 1 crore plus in a month why would you shut down ?

    Just pay for the rights of merchandise .

  5. whats the haal now?

  6. We have exited the merchandise industry 🙂

  7. So, now it looks like you have started some content related website. Best of luck bro.

Comments are now closed for this post.

Lost Password

Register