However, some of the startups that shut shop this year were big names in their space. Here is a lowdown on the key startups that went out of business in 2025.
Founded in 2019, BluSmart set out to challenge India’s ride-hailing duopoly with promises of emission-free assured rides, and salaried drivers.
The model won loyal customers, particularly airport travellers in Delhi, helping the company gain about 9% market share in the city, build a fleet of over 8,000 electric vehicles (EVs) around the country, and raise about $168 million from investors, including BP Ventures and celebrity backers.
In April this year, markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) uncovered large-scale fraud at Gensol Engineering, a listed solar EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction) firm promoted by the Blusmart founders — the Jaggi brothers. Although Gensol held no equity in BluSmart, it owned a significant portion of BluSmart’s EV fleet, creating deep financial linkages. Sebi found that the Gensol promoters had siphoned at least Rs. 262 crore from EV loans, forged lender documents, manipulated share prices, misled investors with false disclosures, and used funds for stock trading and personal luxury purchases.
In the days following the revelation of the fraud, BluSmart’s internal strains were exposed —delayed salaries, a sharp fall in daily rides, and senior leadership exits. The company eventually suspended operations and transitioned its fleet to Uber, sending shockwaves through India’s cleantech and startup ecosystem.
Dunzo
A first-mover in hyperlocal delivery, Dunzo was the talk of the town when it raised $240 million from Reliance Retail in 2022.
This, however, proved insufficient in helping it catch-up with other quick commerce players — Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, and BlinkIt. The company also struggled to raise follow-on funding to sustain operations and for expansion, while the misstep of IPL sponsorship added to mounting financial pressure and customer churn.
A debt-burdened Dunzo was left without any captain to navigate its sinking ship. By September, its only co-founder Kabeer Biswas also exited to build Flipkart’s quick-commerce arm Minutes, bringing Dunzo’s prolonged decline effectively to an end.
Hike
When Kavin Mittal built Hike in 2012, it seemed telecom tycoon Sunil Bharti Mittal’s son had created a homegrown alternative to global messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal, tapping into the rising social messaging trend.
Within four years of its launch, the company had raised over $250 million from venture capital (VC) firms such as Tiger Global, SoftBank, and Tencent, with Kavin Mittal emphasising, `‘we’re here to stay.’’
In its heyday, the app saw over 100 million registered users, sending across more than 40 billion messages per month.
However, the promise to stay fizzled out by 2021, when Hike shut down its core messaging service. Mittal hinted at the difficulty of competing with the overwhelming global network effects enjoyed by international services in India as the reason for doing so. The company pivoted to its new product Rush, a real-money gaming platform.
Earlier, in April 2019, Hike had attempted a repositioning by rebranding its messaging app as Hike Sticker Chat, focussing on a sticker-centric experience. What is usually perceived as a virtue, constant reinvention, became a distracting cry for survival for Hike.
This year the company suffered a final setback after the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act imposed a blanket ban on real-money gaming apps. As a result, Hike shut down its remaining operations in September, bringing to an end its journey as one of India’s earliest consumer internet success stories.
The Good Glamm Group
With a dozen brands and a near-unicorn valuation, the Good Glamm Group appeared to be India’s own Thrasio, a startup that seemed to have cracked the roll-up ecommerce model.
Yet problems surfaced as the group wound down significant parts of its business, including brands such as Sirona and The Mom’s Co.
This was due to flaws in the startup’s business model. The company faced heavy debt related to acquisitions, stalled growth, and a drying funding pipeline. Many acquired brands were either loss-making or too small to scale quickly, and the anticipated synergies from centralised marketing and supply chains failed to materialise.
Good Glamm’s decline became emblematic of the broader unravelling of India’s roll-up ecommerce experiment.
Also Read: End of the road for Good Glamm Group: lenders trigger asset breakup; brands up for sale individually
Otipy
When ex-Blinkit CTO Varun Khurana started this during the lockdown, alongside quick-commerce players such as Zepto, Otipy appeared to offer a clear differentiator — a subscription-based grocery delivery service. At a time when the quick-commerce model itself was still taking shape, the NCR–based B2B2C, farm-to-fork firm raised as much as $44.2 million.
Otipy connected consumers directly with farmers through a community of resellers handling last-mile delivery in Mumbai and Delhi-NCR.
However, eventually, the cash-strapped startup was overwhelmed by the rise of 10-minute delivery services, a promise that Otipy’s nascent network could not support.
Like its peers, signs of strain emerged as the company withheld salary payments and delayed dues to vendors. Five years later, the Crofarm India subsidiary shut operations in May, rendering around 300 employees and delivery partners jobless.
According to Tracxn data accessed by ET, the number of startups winding down operations has dropped almost 80% this year. In contrast, the 2021-22 period witnessed the highest number of closures, with over 11,000 startups shutting down.
The most tech startups that have deadpooled in the last five years belong to the enterprise applications sector, followed by the retail and edtech domains. Healthtech, and entertainment and media, are other sectors where a significant number of startups have failed to survive.
Among states, Maharashtra and Karnataka have seen the highest number of startups shutting down over the last five years.