Marketplaces
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Episode
How TaxiForSure built a successful marketplace by combining data with intuition
TaxiForSure, founded in 2011, was the outcome of a drunken conversation in a Bangalore pub between friends Raghunandan G and Aprameya Radhakrishna, who had both been to National Institute of Technology Karnataka and the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad. Raghunandan was 33 and Radhakrishna a year older.
Three-and-a-half years after it started up in a 100-square-feet office in a Bangalore suburb. TaxiForSure was acquired in March 2015 by bigger rival Ola Cabs, which paid $200 million in a cash and equity deal as it attempted to fend off competition from Uber. By August 2016, TaxiForSure was gone after Ola integrated its service with its own and fired hundreds of its employees.
Today, Raghunandan and Radhakrishna, who both worked briefly at Ola as advisors before walking away, are successful people and have funded a string of startups. The former has founded fintech firm Zolve and the latter is Co-founder of Koo, the Indian version of Twitter. WasTaxiForSure a failure?. Not so if the experience and insights they gained into running a startup in a space like mobility shaped their future roles.
We’re looking for the next generation of successful Indian marketplaces. If you’re an early-stage marketplace founder, apply now here or learn more about the #DecodingMarketplaces Startup Hunt.
We’d love to hear about your experiences with marketplaces. Let us share our learnings and build a better and stronger ecosystem. Write to us at seedtoscale@accel.com to be a part of the Accel family.
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We’re building Passionfroot 1, an operating system for creators to manage their business.
We’re based in Europe and raised our $ 3.4m pre-seed round from Creandum and US angels such as Vlad (Webflow) and creators like Ali Abdaal.As we’re creating a new category and as the creator economy is global and mostly online, we’re building from Day 1 a global company and product that helps creators monetize around the world.
This brings a lot of complexities especially in terms of payments and taxes as our early users are based both in Europe and the US and deal with cross-border transactions.What are Do’s and Dont’s for European startups who have a global ambition and build products for a global customer base from Day 1. Anything you would do differently?
Thanks @pjbouten! Love how you’ve thought about incrementally shaping a category with a focus on product and service, and only then thinking about getting the message out there vs the other way around.
And totally agree on the distinctions and overlaps both self-serve and enterprise motions share.
Thanks, PJ, for taking the time to address questions from the great vantage of shaping Showpad into a global, enterprise SaaS brand!