Founder of Apna lives in US, flies first class, has hired his best friends at huge salaries. More in the link below!

This represents the worst of the ecosystem All of it happened during the peak bull market. Creating a blue collar marketplace made sense in the bull-bharat era.

The rounds happened in a peculiar way too, most top investors didn't even get the chance to evaluate. It was all too quick. Tiger came in quick succession.

Ultimately, we're now saying "The VC's were terrible negotiators & left him with 50% board seats so they cannot fire him". Well, of course.

VCs created the hype. VCs face the brunt.

Wow. This is a weirdly detailed post:

• lived in the usa for 80% of the company's life. (Building for Bharat, mind you)
• always flew only first class on the company's money (his family did too)
• both these best friends are the only senior folks remaining in the company, all the other 8-9 seniors have quit
• is mostly absent from all company platforms like slack or emails. Never reads anything sent to him, only speaks to his 3-4 best friends or yes-men and conveys feedback through them. Rarely has direct conversations.

The US bit is very commonly known within the ecosystem. I'd also heard once he's "run away" to the US. But I guess this is all with the understanding of stakeholders.

Search LinkedIn for Aryan Kenchin. Bigger problems, still not out in the news. Ye to tip of the iceberg hai.

Remember working as an intern for an older competitor when apna had just launched very early stage,and somehow they had raised a lot more money than the competitors combined which weree a lot bigger than that. I could never understand how can a company raise so much when their users and revenues are clearly a lot lesser than us. But then I thought maybe it's the story that they must have sold to the investors, fast forward around a year and they have raised a gazillion dollar at gazillions of valuation, yes they got bigger but not proportionally bigger than us and certainly not the kind of valuation they garnered when we know the paying power of the customers they serve. Still don't know how these valuations are made up when they are just another commoditzed app in the space

Looks like the author had to take down the post. Most likely got served a legal notice I imagine.

Can just find this post now https://x.com/ravihanda/status/1730453950485401872?s=20

Another one where they wont get a successful exit

Another day of Startups KontRibUting to Indiaah'z GROwTh Saaar!

For anyone wondering, The best friends are -

1. Karna choksi
2. Tanmay Desai
3. Priyank Mehta

This post made my day. Apna never deserved to be funded and doesn't deserve to remain funded. It's plain idiotic from VCs not to demand thier unused funds back.

They never had a monetization plan, nor a tech stack. company is just based on nepotism with multiple CTOs quitting. All "revenue" is either interest income or related party transactions with the US entity staffed with relatives. Their initial media articles implied some 5-6% of India's population, not working population but the entire population (don't remember the exact number) interacted thru thier app!! Sheer madness!

On the ground, brand awareness is zilch amongst the blue collars. There are so many other deserving startups in this space that were deprived funding because of Apna.

And yea, the founder may not be dumb but Sequoia and Tiger certainly are!