🛒 PepperTap: what went wrong?
2014 – 2016 · Gurugram
Grocery delivery that took inventory from local kirana stores online, instead of running its own warehouses.
~$51Mraised
~20,000daily orders at peak
17cities by late 2015
⏳ The moment: It's late 2015. You're in 17 cities and growing fast. But customers only order when there's a big discount, so you lose money on almost every order. Investors are getting nervous about the whole sector. What do you do?
What would you do?
What actually happened
In February 2016 it shut operations in 6 cities and let go of about 400 delivery staff. In April 2016 it closed its grocery delivery business altogether and pivoted to logistics. The company itself said it had brought too many stores online too fast, relied on discounts that lost money on orders, and hit a much tougher funding climate in 2016.
💡 Discounts buy customers who leave when the discounts stop. Fix the money-per-order before you scale.
Sources: MediaNama · OfficeChai