Yesterday while browsing through yellowpages.co.in, I noticed a bold message saying “Service Temporarily Unavailable“. Wow!! What was that ? A website backed up with a heavily funded company like AskMe goes down ? Strange ?
Soon I read the news,” AskMe shutting down its operation “. After doing some quick fact check I found that this was indeed true. One more start up gone poof, as Astro Holdings,( which holds 98.5% stake in AskMe Group) refused to participate in the next round of funding and also didn’t do the MBO (management buy out), which was on the cards.
Now what was next on the cards was even more heart breaking :
- The shutdown left more than 4000 employees, vendors, and other creditors helpless.
- 120K merchants left clueless and in a lurch.
- For more than 2 months, the CEO of AskMe, is not in India to answer any queries.
- AskMe has frozen salaries and payments of vendors.
Problems started at AskMe, when it tried to raise cash in February. AskMe was close to raising $200 million from various investors at a valuation of $1 billion.
Now the big question ” Do you think India is on the edge of the Startup Bubble ? If yes, then how long is the startup bubble in India going to last? “