Mumbai-based Purple Squirrel which was founded in September 2013 by Aditya Gandhi and Sahiba Dhandhania has shut down after it could not hit the targeted revenue or curb its cash burn, reports BS.
The startup had laid off 40 staffers in January after raising a bridge round but failed to survive.
The Startup’s Journey
The startup focused on taking undergraduate students on industrial visits across the country and after being incubated at IIT (Indian Institute of Technology)-Bombay in September 2013, by the March quarter of 2015, the company had already earned Rs 3 crore.
Soon, it received Rs 12 crore investment from Matrix but had to achieve a target of Rs 30 crore by 2015-16.
Failing to achieve the target, the company expanded and forayed into travel space by taking students to tourist destinations. This inevitably was not easy with the already established firms existing in this space. And as the burn rate increased, the company failed to raise Series B.
In January, the firm raised a bridge round but that did not solve the problem, as the company had Rs 3 crore left and its burn rate was Rs 1.2 Crore every month. Soon, the employees were asked to leave and as no sales happened with the ongoing exams, the company has finally shut down.
With this number of shutdowns, consolidations and soaring speculations around startups’ business models, is the ecosystem hitting maturity finally?
