What prompted GoBear’s sudden closure?

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Hello readers,

All my colleagues know this: I’m a night owl who usually starts writing newsletters at 12 a.m. each day. So imagine my panic when my Macbook Pro couldn’t switch on one day and I had a newsletter to deliver in less than 14 hours. For the Apple techies who are curious, my device got the “flashing question mark,” which essentially meant my startup disk had died.

Lucky for me, I have a Macbook Air that I can still use – albeit a little slow – as my Macbook Pro gets fixed. But while startup disks can be easily restored (with a bit of money), repairing a startup isn’t as easy, as we saw with Singapore-based fintech firm GoBear, which ended for good.

In this edition, we look at:

• What prompted GoBear’s sudden closure
• The financials of a US$3 billion Indian unicorn
• Other newsy highlights such as Google’s threat to pull Search from Australia and TikTok rival Kuaishou’s US$6 billion IPO

PREMIUM SUMMARY

Failed to bear the weight of Covid-19

Is having US$17 million enough for a startup to survive a pandemic? For fintech company GoBear, it seems that it wasn’t. Despite raising this amount in May last year, GoBear announced that it was shutting down this month.

• A failed pivot?: Launched in 2015, GoBear was an online marketplace for financial products. In the last few years, the Singapore-based startup began transitioning toward becoming a full-fledged financial services platform by launching its own travel insurance products and beefing up its digital lending services.
• Wrong timing?: The odds weren’t in GoBear’s favor: It introduced several white-label travel insurance products during a year when people weren’t traveling due to the pandemic.
• Competitors are thriving: Despite GoBear’s woes, not all financial comparison platforms have encountered as much trouble. MoneySmart, SingSaver, and ValueChampion refocused their efforts into other aspects of their businesses and are seeing a good recovery.

Read more: Behind GoBear’s surprising and sudden closure

STARTUP SPOTLIGHT

The US$3 billion Indian unicorn