Rocket Internet, the German investor and startup studio seeing continuous decline in its portfolio fortunes, is planning to shut down two of its online business in India – FabFurnish and PrintVenue as both the companies are struggling to keep up with the competition — like most other rocket ventures.
Economic Times has today, and YourStory had earlier reported, that Rocket Internet in a ditch attempt, is looking for an Indian partner who can run the failing online business or else, it will shut down operations of FabFurnish and PrintVenue by the end of March.
Earlier, in August 2015, FabFurnish had laid-off around fourth of its workforce and also started vacating warehouses as part of business restructuring, which also involved changing to a marketplace model.
Being one of the first company to enter online furniture market, FabFurnish had an advantage but it is now loosing out to its competitors, including Pepperfry and Urban Ladder. Thus, Rocket Internet is not interested to infused more money is failing companies.
The report also suggests that Rocket Internet tried to sell PrintVenue to Vista Print. However, they didn’t succeed in doing so. Thus, PrintVentue will shut down by the end of March 2016.
Rocket Internet was aiming to be the largest eCommerce company outside of United States and China. But, the companies in which Rocket Internet invested, has been facing a lot of problems in India.
It recently changed leaders of its portfolio companies, including Jabong, FabFurnish, PrintVenue and FoodPanda, in order to turn the business profitable, which is currently loosing money.
Rohit Chadda, co-founder of FoodPanda, quit in Auguest last year, while Praveen Sinha and Arun Chandra Mohan of Jabong quit in September. Fabfurnish’s founders Mehul Agrawal and Vikram Chopra have also left the company to launch their own venture.
According to other report, Paytm, Amazon and Snapdeal were in talks to acquire Jabong but poor valuation forced Global Fashion Group to back out. Also, the group’s attempts to get Zomato to acquire foodpanda also fell apart.
Rocket Internet entered into the Indian market with a bang during FY 2012 and incubated half a dozen companies including Jabong, FoodPanda, Fabfurnish, OfficeYes, HomesandHeaven (formerly, Bamarang.com) and Couponnation. However, none of these companies became big enough to offer an exit to Rocket Internet.
