Wooplr Business Model: Why Wooplr failed?

Wooplr was a ‘product discovery’ platform available for food, fashion, and decor. It helped to discover and recognize the trends in fashion, decor, and food, based on your location, interests, occasion, and social circle. Anyone can recommend your favorite shopping finds by using photos and by seeing what others have recommended.

Wooplr also provided a platform to social sellers by opening their online store, add products from the Wooplr catalog and start selling in less than a minute through social media platforms. On the backside, Wooplr also used to take care of operations such as shipping, payments, returns, and customer service. Wooplr was available on the web, Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. Wooplr was founded by former McAfee employees Arjun Zachariah, Soumen Sarkar, Ankit Sabharwal, and Praveen Rajaratnam in 2013 and was headquartered in Bengaluru, India as a fashion discovery platform. Later in 2017, the startup shifted to a full-fledged social commerce model.

Index:

How Wooplr works?

The Wooplr website and the mobile apps were the fantastic visual guide that helped one decide what to buy, where to shop and where to eat from. In order to know how Wooplr works all you have to do is follow these steps:

In order to join Wooplr all you have to do is to go to the Wooplr website and signup using either your Google account or Facebook profile.
After you signup and make your account on Wooplr choose a catchy quirky unique name for your store.
Now, choose from the 50,000+ preloaded products on Wooplr and add a few products to your store to start with.

After you had added products to your store, share them on your social media accounts like Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, etc. to your friends and followings.
Now, as people will come and make a purchase on your store you will make 15%-25% of the selling price of that product. And plus if people visit your store you will be given the bonus of Rs. 10 for every 100 people. You just have to earn through your store and keep a share of that earning.
You can withdraw your earnings which will be shown on the earning tab via Paytm or your Bank account.

And that’s it, it was as easy as you have read.

Business Model:

Key Partners:

Wooplr has over 200 brand partnerships. The key partners of Wooplr are Forever 21, Zara, Nykaa, etc. Wooplr wanted to partner with a range of businesses and organizations.

Key Activities:

Wooplr is Bengaluru based platform for food, fashion, and decor. The company offers various self-service offerings, including shipping, payments, returns, and customer service. To create a better experience, Wooplr took control of the buying aspect on its platform, rather than linking users to online and offline vendors for the products listed on its website and apps.

Key Resources:

Wooplr’s key resources are its brand, its catalog of products, and its physical properties which include an in-store or online website or apps and distribution centers.

Value propositions:

Online fashion discovery platforms such as Wooplr simulate the ‘window shopping’ experience and therefore, have a strong value proposition. The company also gives value to its customers by providing them with services, product catalogs, and discounts.

Customer Relationship:

Wooplr always took care of its customers by giving all possible services, providing product catalog, giving discounts, returning the products. Wooplr also used to take care of operations such as shipping, payments, returns, and customer service. Wooplr also helps to find out what you want to eat based on the current trend and show you the places near your location.

Customer Segments:

The target market of Wooplr was stay-at-home women, a large audience with credit cards, disposable income, and who have access to the internet.

Channels:

Wooplr channelized with its customers through different social media platforms like Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, etc. Customers can shop from their website.

Cost Structure:

Wooplr produces the operation and maintenance of distribution in supply chain.

Revenue Streams:

The company Wooplr’s revenue was Rs1.02 crores in the financial year 2016 as compared to last year’s Rs19,898 but the net loss widened 8x at Rs18.8 crores as expenses soar.

Investor’s Details and funding:

The total funding of the company is $18 million, with the last funding round as $2.51 million, Series B, April 15, 2019. The valuation of the company is $40 million as of November 19, 2018. There were several investors of Wooplr, some of them were Helion Venture Partners, Amereus, Trifecta Capital, Sistema Asia Capital, Astarc Ventures, Akatsuki, etc. Now, let us see the graph of 2 fundings done in 2015 and 2017:

Competitors:

Glowroad
Evermos
Elenas

Meesho
Fanjoy

Why Wooplr failed?

“The company has shut down after an internal decision was taken about not going through with the acquisition,” a senior member of the Wooplr team told a leading website on the condition of anonymity. All the employees have been referred to other companies, the source added. The company had also informed its clients about the temporary shutdown of its operations and had told them that they will take care of the pending payments in the coming months.

However, on reaching out to some of the suppliers which are associated with Wooplr, the website learned that the company (Wooplr) had said that the delay in payments was due to the closing of the financial year. Suraj Desai, owner of a fabric provider called Sunfnl said that he including a few other suppliers were promised payments by March 18(2019) but is still to receive payment. The actual trouble that erupted for the company was six months ago after the negotiations with a German company for funding fell through. The firm had been able to raise an amount of $10 million in its lifetime. Wooplr shut down in May 2019 after struggling to find investors for the company and negotiations for mergers were unsuccessful.

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What is Wooplr?

Wooplr provided a platform to social sellers by opening their online store, add products from the Wooplr catalog and start selling in less than a minute through social media platforms. On the backside, Wooplr also used to take care of operations such as shipping, payments, returns, and customer service. Wooplr was available on the web, Android, iOS, and Windows Phone.

Who founded Wooplr?

Wooplr was founded by former McAfee employees Arjun Zachariah, Soumen Sarkar, Ankit Sabharwal, and Praveen Rajaratnam in 2013 and was headquartered in Bengaluru, India as a fashion discovery platform. Later in 2017, the startup shifted to a full-fledged social commerce model.