Snapdeal bids adieu to its online marketplace Shopo

E-commerce giant Snapdeal has decided to shut Shopo, its online marketplace for Indian designer and handcrafted products from February 10, as per a blogpost by the company.

“We started a year and a half ago, from a small conference room with our mission to enable small and individual sellers across India to sell online. In this short time, we have together discovered the dynamism and vibrance in the C2C space in India. We thank you for your support and feedback that enabled our young team to help more than 2 lakh sellers start and grow their online shops,” read the Shopo blogpost.

The move comes at a time when the Gurgaon-based online retailer is aggressively pushing its efforts to cut costs and conserve cash to make up for the voluminous losses it has been incurring, reportedly losing almost INR 29.6 billion in 2015-16. Snapdeal had shut its luxury fashion portal Exclusively earlier this year which it had acquired in February 2015. It was ambitious to position Exclusively as a rival to the Flipkart-owned Myntra. Shopo was acquired by the e-commerce player in 2013 to allow small and medium sized businesses to chat, buy and sell on the platform at a zero-commission, and zero fees policy. In 2015, Snapdeal had also proposed a plan to invest $100 million in Shopo over the next two years. As mentioned in one of analysis earlier, last week, Snapdeal abruptly suspended an incentive program for customers that it employs through affiliates, highlighting the online marketplace’s struggles to conserve cash as fresh investments get tougher to secure. But Shopo remains to be optimistic about the e-commerce growth in India. “The e-commerce market in India will continue its robust growth. However, we realize that it will take some more years for a broader ecosystem to develop around the C2C segment. It is tempting to go on, but it is often beneficial to pause, take stock and plan ahead for greater success. It is time for us to pause the Shopo journey for now,” the blog read. While the Shopo app and web storefront will stop working from 10th February 2017, the company has extended its support through its official email support@shopo.in for any help that its clients might need during the transition.