Vernacular Content Platform Bluepad Shuts Down

Vernacular content platform Bluepad has shut down its operations as the startup was struggling to stay afloat.

The Bengaluru-based startup was founded in 2020 by Sanjyot Bhosale, Devakrishna Asokar and Kishore Garimella. Bluepad had raised INR 1.8 Cr (around $250K) in a Pre-Seed funding round led by Titan Capital and AngelList’s Syndicate in 2021.

The startup provided aggregated content solutions in vernacular languages for Indian users. On the platform, users could read and post written content including blogs, poems, stories and experiences in regional languages and form communities.

Bluepad was positioning itself to be the Medium for the non-English speaking population in India and focused on Marathi. Bluepad competed with the likes of YourQuote, Miraquill and TerriblyTinyTales, among others.

The development was first reported by Entrackr. One of the sources cited by the publication stated that Bluepad failed to raise funds post the first round, which led the startup to wind up operations.

Incidentally, one of the cofounders, Bhosale, also mentioned in her LinkedIn profile that the Bluepad team could not find a reliable monetisation channel. “Decided to wind up as we couldn’t foresee a strong urgent need for the product among the users and a reliable monetisation channel in the long term,” said Bhosale.

The three cofounders have since moved on to different projects, per their LinkedIn profiles. Bhosale is now a product manager at Koo, Garimella is the founder of WorkBrow, and Asokar joined Articuno Coding as chief executive officer.

The development comes as the Indian startup ecosystem is weathering the worst funding winter in recent years. Per Inc42’s ‘Indian Tech Startup Funding Report, Q1 2023’, Indian startup funding fell by 75% during the March quarter, compared to the year-ago period.

Over the past five quarters or so, startup funding has been on a near-continuous decline, which has seen many startups shutting down during that time. In 2022 alone, as many as eight startups closed shop amid adverse macroeconomic conditions. Since the start of 2023, the likes of SimSim, Zili and WeTrade have winded down operations as well, taking the total to 12 reported startup casualties of the funding winter so far.

Of the startups shutting shop recently, a majority have been edtech startups. Five out of the eight startups that were shut down during 2022 were from the edtech space. Edtech also happened to have the ignominy of being the segment with the most layoffs since the start of 2022, per Inc42’s ‘Indian Startup Layoff Tracker’.