India Accelerator: Start and End to SustainKart

After the fundraise activity, the company went ahead with rapid expansion plans as discussed with the accelerator ; building house of brands (private labels), acquiring sustainable D2C brands and retail/off-line expansion, that led to a quick burn of the fund. While India Accelerator kept assuring the start-up of a follow-on round targeting $1.5-2M, within 6 months from the pre-seed, they took forever (18 months) and finally could raise only $220k. Only founders would know how many sleepless, anxious nights we’ve spent during such a phase. Usually all financials presented to the investors were are by accelerators.

During this dry phase, the founders have also invested/loaned money to the company via personal savings and hand loans from friends and family. Founders also approached a lot of VCs and other investors outside IA during this dry phase who denied to invest and said Sustainability eCommerce business model is too early for Indian market. A few including InfoEdge, Kalaari, Accel personally prompted that SustainKart is a model that will take longer than what we can expect to even find PMF. Meanwhile the company ran into a stage of deep liability.

“As a founder the one thing I couldn’t learn/adapt from the accelerator was Pump & Dump, probably why they decided to de-accelerate the start-up and my career (trying to make me a scapegoat). We were all in this one together. Crying foul on social media, trying to damage the reputation of the founders on public platforms is definitely not expected from IA, who was our mentor, guide, coach etc. We definitely need stricter laws to protect random public bullying and personal/professional character assassination”, says Kanthi Dutt.

The founder is glad that he followed a wise man’s suggestion : “Pull the plug before it’s too late (too much of a waste)”. Today he’s not having to repent about raising 10s millions of dollars in the name of sustainability. Shilpa Reddy exited the company few months prior to the shut down of the company and the company operations have been closed for over a year now. “Our company secretary team is working on the compliance to file bankruptcy”, he added.

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