Ankur Warikoo to resign from Nearbuy: A quick look at startup's journey so far!

Ankur Warikoo, CEO and co-founder of deal discovery platform Nearbuy, has announced today that he would step down as the CEO of the company.

In a LinkedIn post published this morning, Warikoo said: he will leave the company in November passing on the baton to the other co-founders Ravi Shankar and Snehesh Mitra who will take over the management of Nearbuy.

Shankar, who is the current COO of Nearbuy, will assume the role of CEO while Mitra will take over as the COO of the Paytm-owned company. Warikoo will continue as a shareholder and board member of the company.

Nearbuy was founded in 2011 as Groupon India after its Chicago based Parent Groupon Inc acquired SoSasta in 2011 to start operations in India. Warikoo and Shankar were executives in Groupon and the former led the company after founders of SoSasta exited.

Later, Groupon India rebranded as Nearbuy after Sequoia facilitated the exit of Groupon Inc in 2015.

Two years later, Nearby was acquired by the payments firm Paytm in a distress deal, along with Little. Paytm facilitated a share exchange agreement between shareholders of Little and Nearbuy following which Nearbuy became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Little Internet.

The purchase consideration for the acquisition of both companies was set at Rs 272.31 crore.

After the acquisition, the company had access to a vast pool of resources as well as a wide userbase of acquirer - Paytm. However, it failed to make a mark as revenues couldn't keep up with the expenses. The company had an overall turnover of Rs 33.28 crore with losses amounting to Rs 49.11 crore FY18.

Interestingly, Warikoo claimed that Nearbuy had achieved the milestone of being cash flow positive two months ago.

While the company has not filed its financials for FY19 with RoC yet, Paytm’s annual report hinted a gloomy picture for the company. As per the report, Nearbuy’s losses were close to Rs 51 crore, and turnover had crossed Rs 44 crore in FY19.