It was on the fateful day of August 17 that AskMe shocked the tech industry by shutting down. It seemed as if the digital-listings and e-commerce start-up, with $300 million in funding and touted to be on its way to becoming a unicorn, went spiralling down overnight. But in fact, the firm’s troubles began much earlier.
Its top management had kept the lid on the business falling apart. The suspension of business was never formally announced, leaving scores of employees still waiting for their salaries and vendors for their dues. This is the saga of AskMe’s downward spiral.
AskMe got distracted from its listings business when the e-commerce scene started heating up in India, a former senior official in the company who did not want to be named told Tech In Asia.
"We had a good product in hand. We wanted to make it the Yelp of India. But somewhere in the middle we realised that things weren’t transparent. There was resistance from top management if we tried to change things. The venture wasn’t being run professionally," he said.
What gave away AskMe’s financial trouble was an email sent on August 17 to “select” employees by Anand Sonbhadra, the group chief financial officer of Getit Infoservices that runs AskMe.
The mail directed these employees to disable transaction and payment options on the websites. The mail was leaked to other employees and thus started a panic reaction to possible bankruptcy.
On August 23, AskMe terminated its contract with recruitment agency Innov, which it had engaged to outsource hiring of delivery boys. Well, at least they had a formal communication from AskMe. The same cannot be said for AskMe’s own 4,000 employees.
This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here
