Bangalore. Three leading Venture Capitalist firms (VCs) have announced they will pull out of TransNuvo Robotics, a startup leading a revolution in home, office and public transport automation space because the investors became aware that the founders cheated them by not disclosing that the startup idea was original.
Talking to Faking News, Kuber Seth, India MD of ‘Tiger Local’, a leading global VC firm said, “We are exiting TransNuvo with immediate effect. We invested believing this was a foolproof idea copied exactly from the US or Europe and ‘localized’ for Indian market. We are still in disbelief that founders hid this fact from us that their product concepts are original. We are looking at our legal options.”
“To add insult to injury, TransNuvo broke even and is now even profitable. We have become a joke in the VC community as the only VC to fund a startup that is doing revenues,” Seth added.
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It will be worth noting that ‘localization’ is the flavor of the season in the tech community, with all the top tech startups in India backed by top VCs being ‘inspired’ from a US or other startups from across the globe.
Startup Guru Sunil Murthy tells Faking News that TransNuvo has only one option – to remove this stigma of ‘Innovator’ from its brand, and become a grocery delivery service.
“Everyone is doing grocery delivery,” he quipped.
“In fact, they could be a marketplace selling everything from undergarments to real-estate with own payment gateway plus wallet and courier service but mobile first only with grocery delivery using an app that lets users get chauffeured around while ordering food. This will make sure they are as non original as one can be and ensure repeat funding,” added Sunil.
Sanjay Jain, an early 90s entrepreneur who somehow managed to create an original B2B product in India used by global companies told us, “Don’t bank on VC money if you are foolish enough to attempt to create a new category in such times. Or move to US.”
Meanwhile CEO of TransNuvo, Mr. Iyer when contacted said, “There has been a miscommunication. We did copy from a US startup but the original startup decided to turn themselves into photo-editing app from a Robotics firm, and now we look like the startup that wants to be original like idiots.”
“I’d like to assure VC community that none of our ideas are original or ever will be. We are committed to localizing the best tested ideas from US for the Indian market. I mean, who does original ideas and category creation BS in Indian market? Man, I’ve an MTech degree from IITB for god’s sake!” added Iyer.
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