Burrp price Rs 4.25 crore
By Sumir Singh

In 2007, Techgoss had approached a small but extremely promising startup ‘Burrp!’ to get interesting, humorous incidents that take place in the life of a new company. (Article published below)

Burrp! has been a success and has been bought out by Infomedia18 for Rs. 425 lakhs. The sale price was kept secret after the acquisition in March, 2009.

Medianama which broke the story of the sale price is reporting:

“
According to a filing with the Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Infomedia18 had paid a total amount of Rs. 4.255 crores for acquiring Burrp.

The sale was deemed effective as of March 15, 2009. Terms: Under the terms of the business transfer agreement, the parties have agreed that burrp! shall indemnify Infomedia18 for any losses, liabilities or damages incurred by our Company with respect to the burrp! business which related to the period prior to March 15, 2009. Our Company (Infomedia18) shall be responsible for all liabilities relating to the burrp! Business that arise after March 15, 2009.
“

(Techgoss had published the following story on April 23, 2007)

Startups:  Something Funny Happened

News media articles have covered Indian startups in great detail,  with stories on the their Indian founders/connections,  business plans,  funding,  spirit of enterprise, competition and other serious elements of the dot com success stories sweeping India.

Techgoss, while continuing to report on the above points, is starting a series where we will give the humorous situations encountered by startups.  These could be Venture Capitalists getting bored while being pitched to,   hard disk crashes with the one copy of the business plan (actually, not so funny)  and a  key employee leaving because ‘God’ told him to.  You get the drift of such incidents which result in hearty laughs.  Hopefully, these funny stories will balance the more serious and boring side of the tech business.

In the first snippet,  Burrp! Co-founder Deap Ubhi recounts a couple of incidents which are the source of much hilarity now;  but not when they actually happened.

“About the best one I can think of, which is also very indicative of the country's polarity, was when I was taking a call from Venture Capitalist Sherpalo on the phone at a train station, quite a serious conversation about a series A investment. Outside of the normal hustle-bustle of the local trains in Mumbai, this supposedly old blind couple started singing some sympathy inducing hymns about their misfortunes at the top of their lungs. Needless to say, I was very embarrassed, because it must have been more than audible on the phone.

We also had an unnamed Venture Capitalist group that came into our office, back when we were still in a small residential flat, for an all-hands on meeting. While we were all sitting there, one of the cane chairs that a partner was sitting on totally gave in and he fell flat on his ass. We all shared a good laugh, but it was quite a ridiculous situation.”

( burrp! is an online social lifestyle portal. Currently,  its  focus is heavily concentrated on food and nightlife, but its founders  plan to expand their portal within local as well as build a few other city-agnostic products as well.

The co-founders, Anand Jain and Deap Ubhi compliment each other . Anand focuses all his efforts and experience in technology and product strategy, whereas Deap leads business development and  corporate strategy. Anand is a brilliant technologist with his most recent post being at Motorola China. Deap  has been purely in private equity/M&A, and most recently was  as a VP with Alpine Investors in San Francisco, CA. Both gave up successful careers in the west to chase their dreams in India)