bluegape.com is Fan Merchandising business started by three undergrads from dorm rooms of IIT Kanpur. Company is doing great (profitable) with just seedfunding of INR 10 Lakhs from Times Internet Ltd. Founders just graduated 8 months back and now running the complete show with team size of 20+. bluegape has a strong team with a strong vision. Idea is to build a company where people can find Fan Merchandising of the Brands they love. In U.S., it’s pretty easy to find merchandise of Google, Zynga or Harry Porter but In India it’s not very easy to find Fan Merchandise of CCD, Games2Win or DDLJ. Bluegape is trying to fill that gap between brand and people who want to flaunt with brand’s Fan Merchandise.
SeventyMM.com, the online movie rental business which later diversified into full fledged e-commerce business seems to be shutting down. The Bangalore based company has raised around $21.4 Million from from NEA-Indo US Ventures, Matrix Partners India, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and ePlanet Ventures. Last month, the company lost its Chief Executive Officer Mudit Khosla to Naspers backed marketplace Tradus. Recently there’s a news that SeventyMM is likely to SHUT its operations.
Customers for bluegape are people who are religious Fan of something and want to buy merchandise of what they love. Movies merchandise is a big category for bluegape. Movie freak people are well defined customers of SeventyMM. SeventyMM was a biggest (first) movie rental company of India. SeventyMM also got rights for merchandise of some big movie brands
bluegape can bring a great team on board and SeventyMM will bring a big user base, brands on board. bluegape has strong technology to make customized products on lines of Zazzle. Fan Merchandising with customization is still a niche vertical in India.
Fan Merchandising is a $60 billion industry in India. It’s a high margin business and no inventory model at bluegape. bluegape has a low operational cost so there’s in no urgent need to raise Big VC money to scale the business. There’s still no big player in the customization business. More brands + technology is a answer to scale the business. Atleast this will be a one those merger of E-Commerce Industry which is not driven by VC pressure but because of synergies.
Can anyone of help me in getting tough with people at SeventyMM? I am at @sbaghla