Burrp was one of the most loved web2.0 product from India – the company, to a certain extent shaped the notion of a ‘cool product/great user experience’ and had a massive fan following.
Infomedia 18 acquired Burrp in April of 2009 and Burrp now seems to have lost the mindshare in local search market.
A few months post-acquisition, Deap Ubhi (founder of Burrp) quit the company (he is now running lilluxe.com)
So what really happened?
the ride at burrp was wilder than driving drunk while getting a bj, the end result of which was settling for an arranged marriage with a not-so-pretty infomedia. she definitely had potential, which is what attracted us the most to her. her main asset was her voluptuous local listings database. it wasn’t until after things got going that we found out she was wearing a push-up bra. there was something there, but it wasn’t as attractive as it first appeared.
well this was ok. we at burrp had done an amazingly efficient job curating arguably the most enviable local listings db in the country. we really felt this was an opportunity for us to emerge as leaders within infomedia, the next generation of tech savvy brats that were going to elevate the company out of the dusty doldrums of soon-to-be-extinct print driven revenues; but the wheels turned slow, and understandably, there were thickets of politics, bureaucracy and red tape to hack through in order to get anything accomplished. like a black hole, it became something that could potentially trap all the enthusiasm, vigor and light of a young, creative, entrepreneurial team. in the beginning, it seemed achievable to fight the good fight. towards the end, i had given up.
one of the main cues for my exit was when we began hiring buffoons at relatively senior levels. even crazier, we as a company started listening to them and acting on their so-called expertise. that was a pill i just couldn’t swallow [deap’s blog].
So basically the deal was made to look sweet artificially, but the real challenge was driving through the maze of bureaucracy and politics.
A startups’ real conundrum – if you get acquired, you die of bureaucracy and if you sustain, they try (attempted) to kill you with their muscle power.
Interestingly, as per Alexa, 70% of Burrp’s traffic now comes from tv.burrp.com! So what happened to the local search, the lifestyle listings?
