Quikr is a dumpster fire
Twelve years since it first opened for business, millions of dollars in funding and several acquisitions later, the company is a mangled mess

Why read this story?
Editor's note: If you follow the news cycle that started earlier this year, you’d almost start believing that things are looking up for Quikr, a company that used to be an online classifieds business. A unicorn, valued at over $1 billion, Quikr does not get the sort of breathless coverage that other revered Unicorns do. Not because Quikr is loved less. It is only because no sane individual can accurately decipher what exactly Quikr is up to at any given point in time. The company’s strategy can put shifting sands to shame. There are points in time, as it wildly acquired company after company, that this writer thought of Quikr as a chameleon. Only to later regret that a chameleon is intelligent. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Online classifieds and services portal Quikr narrowed its losses to ₹230.04 crore in the financial year ended March 2019 from ₹237.43 crore loss a year ago. The Bengaluru-based startup reported a 74% year-on-year increase in revenues for FY19 to ₹191.22 crore, according to documents sourced from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. The startup’s total …
More in Internet
You may also like
Eternal’s leap of faith: exit Goyal, enter Dhindsa
Deepinder Goyal’s handing of Eternal’s reins to Albinder Dhindsa raises uncomfortable questions about timing, risk and whether shareholders are being asked to trust yet another reassuring narrative.
BellaVita’s success has opened the floodgates to cheap fragrance brands
In less than five years, BellaVita has become one of the biggest fragrance brands in India. This has given several others confidence to follow the same playbook and sell cheap perfumes disguised as luxury.
Eternal, Swiggy, Zepto are all unskilled worker arbitrage businesses
Exploitation of unskilled workers is at the heart of quick-delivery service businesses in India. They should be valued for what they are and not what they pretend to be, a trait that has taken a devious form of wanting it both ways.






