Photo credit: Pixabay.
1. Ensogo
One of the most spectacular startup failures this year was Ensogo, a network of ecommerce sites operating across Southeast Asia and Hong Kong.
In May merchants began complaining they weren’t receiving the money for the products they’d sold through the site.
It all went south from there. Ensogo was blaming delayed payments to merchants on reduced manpower after it cut its team size. Customer complaints piled up.
In June, Ensogo’s Australian shareholders withdrew all support for Asian operations and the marketplaces went offline. Ensogo, part of Patrick Grove’s Catcha Group, listed on the ASX in 2013.
Various factors contributed to Ensogo’s collapse, but the most obvious one was that its concept, which relied heavily on discounts, deals, and flash sales, failed to generate loyal customers.
Ensogo is dead, but Catcha Group founder Patrick Grove still has iFlix, iCar Asia, iProperty, and Rev Asia to care about.
2. Tripda
A lot happened in the Rocket Internet universe this year. Its Southeast Asian ecommerce site Lazada was sold off to Alibaba and its online food delivery service Foodpanda folded into competitor Delivery Hero. Other operations were downsized or restructured.
Rocket Internet also counted some complete losses, for example, its carpooling app Tripda. It covered 13 markets, six of which were in Asia.
Rocket Internet claimed the app had “healthy user adoption,” but the main reason for its shutdown was the immense competition in transportation. “We confirm the decision to discontinue the operations of Tripda due to long-term monetization concerns and emerging competitive pressures,” the firm said.
3. Sparklist
Tripda wasn’t the only service to go. Rocket Internet also quietly said goodbye to Sparklist, a mobile classifieds app.
It had launched in Pakistan in November last year and expanded to the Philippines soon after, but by May this year the app was no longer accessible. Rocket Internet never confirmed the closure.
4. Passport Asia
5. Novelsys
6. TMI news portal
7. Partyphile
8. HaloDiana
9. Shopious
10. Antar
11. Zeemi
12. Tulungin
13. Snapeee
14. Contract Beast
15. Ezubao
What about India?
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