About a year and a half back, Snapdeal launched its e-platform ‘Shopo’ for small and individual sellers across India. And now within a short span of time, Shopo is being closed down by Snapdeal. The company today announced the said plans of via Shopo’s official blog. The official release stated,
In this short time, we have together discovered the dynamism and vibrance in the C2C space in India. It is time for us to pause the Shopo journey for now.While the Shopo app and web storefront will stop working from 10th February 2017, we will continue to available at support@shopo.in for any help that you may need.
We all know that Snapdeal is stuck in a deep pit of losses and is constantly in search of more capital to stay competitive. Prior to killing the handicraft platform, Snapdeal had laid down its fashion goods platform Exclusively.com on to the death bed. The company’s continuous efforts to cut down costs are clearly visible; hence pointing towards the chaos going on internally.
This news comes on the heels of the departure of Sandeep Komaravelly, Senior VP and in-charge of Snapdeal’s failed attempt — Shopo. Sandeep has reportedly left to join a new venture after the unit was merged with FreeCharge. In addition to him, the company even saw Abhishek Kumar, Head of Corporate development leave on unmentioned grounds.
Snapdeal-owned mobile-only marketplace Shopo was acquired by the company back in 2013. The zero commission business model allowed small and medium-sized businesses to chat, buy and sell on the platform. The app even enabled SMBs and small shop owners to go online, without any requirement of official documents or verification process at first.
The news of shuttering the portal definitely comes as a shock but was also expected after their team’s merger with FreeCharge. The sellers linked to the portal were assured by Snapdeal of a massive investment of $100 million over the next two years. But, that doesn’t seem to be the case, if you ask me. Snapdeal further added to its blog,
As the Shopo team moves on to solve new problems, with a deep sense of humility we would like to thank you for being a pillar of support and for taking this journey with us. This would not have been possible without you. We are super proud of what we have achieved together.We hope to have you join us on another journey soon!
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