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Context is everything.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Mukesh Bansal’s Curefit has all the funding it needs, but little semblance of a strategy.
Editor's note: Since long before it became commonplace for venture capital investors to publicly praise their portfolio companies, Vani Kola, the managing director of Kalaari Capital, has been building up Mukesh Bansal. At conferences where Kola speaks about the ecosystem, she’s often called Bansal the smartest entrepreneur in India. Other names that would feature sometimes are Kunal Bahl of Snapdeal and more recently Harsh Jain of Dream11, but Bansal is a constant fixture. Kola and Bansal go back more than a decade, when late in 2007, Indo-US Ventures (now Kalaari Capital) put a tiny cheque into Bansal’s fashion e-commerce startup Myntra. Some six years later, when Flipkart acquired the company for $300 million, Kalaari got its biggest exit ever. Not surprising then that when Bansal started again with Curefit in 2016, Kalaari came on board on day one. And the story of Bansal’s intellect took on a legend of its own, fanned regularly by the likes of Kola. Cut to today—earlier this month, Bansal’s Curefit laid off 800 employees, announced salary cuts across the board, and exited a number of smaller Indian …
The online storytelling company is betting that content will be the most sought-after commodity as scores of platforms jump on the microdrama bandwagon. But success will hinge on whether it has a good enough story to draw the audience.
SEBI has lowered the bar for loss-making startups to list. In that context, a company like Zepto redefines the meaning of risk in public market investing.
The 15-year-old company has bought one brand after another in the hope of growing fast. That plan has fallen flat on its face, but there’s no stopping Wingreens.
