The social learning platform Bluelearn declared on Sunday that it was closing since it was difficult for the business to expand quickly. The three-year-old company will give its investors their money back in full.
The Bengaluru-based startup has raised almost $4 million from Elevation Capital, Lightspeed, Titan Capital, and 2am VC in two rounds. Awais Ahmed, Vivek Mohan, Vidit Aatrey, and Sanjeev Barnwal, among other angel investors, supported the community-driven platform.
“We realised that building a venture-scale business with Bluelearn was tough. We had been very conservative with capital, allowing us to return 70% of the capital we raised back to investors,” Bluelearn’s co-founder and CEO Harish Uthayakumar said on X.
Bluelearn, which was founded by Uthayakumar and Shreyans Sancheti, began as a Telegram channel where students could assist one another with common inquiries. The startup stated at the height of its existence that it had over 250,000 members from different colleges and startups in India and overseas.
Since its founding, the organization has assisted thousands of students in finding internships, employment, and friends through its online community.
As of right now in 2024, over six Indian startups have ceased operations. The names on the list are Rario, OKX (India), Muvin, GoldPe, Koo, Nintee, and Resso (India). Some of them have, nevertheless, also declared that they will reimburse their investors for a sizeable portion of their money.
For background, the April shutdown of Paras Chopra-led digital health startup Nintee included a statement stating that the company would repay the majority of the money it had raised from investors.
Comparably, after going through insolvency procedures, trading app Investmint will return 25% of capital. Fashinza and Virgo, two fashion startups that failed at pivoting, are reportedly going to give their investors their money back.
Data shows that in 2023, a lack of funding and other difficulties led to the closure of over 15 startups.
