ShopClues

How it happened

ShopClues was an Indian online marketplace focused on smaller towns and unbranded goods, reaching unicorn status at a $1.1B valuation in January 2016 with backing from Tiger Global and Nexus. As Amazon and Flipkart pushed into the same tier-2 and tier-3 markets, ShopClues slashed marketing to chase profitability, its gross merchandise value slumped, and repeated fundraising attempts failed. A founder feud and an insider-trading case further drained investor confidence, and in 2019 Singapore's Qoo10 acquired it in an all-stock deal valuing it at under $100M — a 90%-plus wipeout. Glassdoor reviews from the years after the takeover describe a diminished, slow-moving operation, with employees repeatedly citing appraisals and salary raises frozen for years at a marketplace that had settled well below its unicorn-era peak.

Employee accounts paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗. See our methodology.