AskmeBazaar has fired over 250 employees while it struggles to raise new funding.
AskmeBazaar, one of the top-10 trusted online shopping brands in India, has fired over 250 employees, BGR India has learnt via multiple sources. The company has made no formal announcement at the moment, and BGR India has reached out to the company for confirmation. Emails and calls to the company’s PR and Communications team went unanswered at the time of filing the story.
AskmeBazaar is a part of the Getit Infoservices group, which started out by publishing Yellow Pages and then launched AskMe.com, a classifieds portal, in 2010. In 2012, the company launched AskmeBazaar, a shopping portal focusing on small and medium enterprises (SMEs). With next-day-delivery, it sort of acts like a delivery-and-cash-collection agent between the local sellers and local audience.
The shopping portal operates in over 70 cities, including metros and tier II cities as well, and boasts over 120,000 merchants. AskmeBazaar, includes Malaysia-based Astro Holdings as one of the principle investors. Recently the company was in the news for reportedly being in talks with Chinese companies for another round of funding. It was said to be in talks with China’s Alibaba Group Holding and Baidu to raise investments to the tune of $200 million.
AskmeBazaar isn’t the only hyperlocal service that seems to be in trouble. Earlier this month, Gurgaon-based PepperTap too announced that it planned to shut down its grocery delivery operations. Earlier this year, Grofers, backed by SoftBank, Sequoia and Tiger Global, too announced that it was pulling out of nearly nine markets.
We will update this post as and when we hear more from the company.
Source: bgr.in
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