Mumbai based Taskbob to shutdown

Mumbai based Taskbob to shutdown

Once again there’s a wrap up in the startups zone. Mumbai-based ultility services startup Taskbob shut down recently. They were unable to reach their desired scale and profits. Perhaps this was the reason that they closed down all their services. The CEO and Co-founder Aseem Khare sent the users an email confirming the news.

In the mail, the CEO wrote that all services of the company shall shut down from 19^th January 2017 onwards due to “unforeseen circumstances”. The orders placed will be processed in due course of time. Such a heart wrenching email set the tone for a mournful ending.

What was Taskbob all about?

• Taskbob was run by Crenovative Ideas Pvt. Ltd. IIT graduates Abhiroop Medhekar, Amit Chahalia, Ajay Bhatt and Aseem Khare, started it in the year 2014.
• It was a mobile-only startup initially. The users had to download an app to use it. The idea was to send skilled home service personnel to fix people’s appliances.
• So if your refrigerator needed servicing or computer needed fixing, Taskbob would send its skilled personnel to fix these issues at your doorstep.
• Even though Taskbob is now shutting down, Aseem Khare has said that, in order to continue to help its users, they have shared the list of all the verified service providers.
• So the users now have the details of the plumbers, carpenters, electricians, house and car cleaners, etc. at their bay. Taskbob has made sure its users still get benefitted.

But why did the startup shut down so abruptly?

According to Khare, they were able to achieve a significant rise in the number of customers. They were also able to build better network of service providers. However the future of a business is solely based on scalability and profitability. They were not able to achieve the high levels of scalability that they would have otherwise thought about.

Although they knew, Khare said that it is a tough external market and it was a low margin business, yet, they did not expect the scalability to be as low as this. It is indeed a problem that they were unable to solve. However, the details of the shutting down were not revealed any further.

Funding and acquisitions

The company raised over $5 million from Orios Venture Partners and IvyCap Ventures. It also acquired a Bengaluru-based startup called Zepper. They raised their last round of funding in February 2016.

In the last two years the company claimed that it had over 1.5 lakh orders. Even though it was operating simply by the app, it still managed to grow a steady base of customers who repeatedly ordered from them. UrbanClap and HouseJoy were their sole competitors in the field.

It is interesting to note that last year saw the demise of many startups. AskMe and Snapdeal backed PepperTap were some of the startups that shut shop in 2016. High cash burn is one of the reasons to blame for this issue.

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