Times Internet owned Indiatimes Shopping seems to be shutting down its operation in the coming months. According to two sources familiar with the matter, the top management has been pondering to shut down Indiatimes Shopping from January this year.
“The top management scaled down the operation of its etail arm over the past six months. There was also discussions to sell the venture but it did not work out,” says one of the senior executives who resigned from Indiatimes Shopping recently.
Indiatimes Shopping was one of the oldest e-commerce venture which evangelized inventory plus marketplace model. Like other e-commerce ventures, Indiatimes Shopping has been struggling to post and foresee signs of profitability.
The move is also being seen as an important strategy of Satyan Gajwani, who took over TIL as CEO in July 2012. Since then, the company had acquired lifestyle website MensXp and Gawbl, invested in over 15 companies via TLabs (TIL’s accelerator), including recent funding in CouponDunia and partnered with several global companies.
TIL has also invested in global startups like Fab and Skift.
Last month, when we had asked Satyan Gajwani about a possible shutdown, he said, “We’ve been successful in managing our cost structure and we are operating margin positive today, which is a big achievement. It allows us now to think about how to invest in growth, which is what we’re evaluating currently.”
The possible shut-down of Indiatimes Shopping also comes as a surprise for the ecosystem as TIL has deep pocket to stay in the ‘last man standing’ game of e-commerce. However, some experts also see it as rational move owing to its operational overheads.
There has been an exodus (or maybe layoff) of senior and mid-level employees. While major chunk of employees moved to other companies, some were shifted to other verticals of the group.
In an earlier interaction with YourStory, Satyan had outlined that Indiatimes Shopping would continue to grow, “but it’s been more oriented around profitable growth, rather than growth at all costs.”