World’s first food blogging platform Cucumbertown to shut down its operation soon. In a blog released by the company, here are some of the highlights:
- Cucumbertown will be completely shutting down by March 31st, 2017.
- Cucumbertown will be stopping the monetization, as of the end of December 31, 2016.
- All the technical support will be stopped, as of the end of March 31st, 2017.
According to the blog, the real reason to shut down the platform is the lack of sustainable business model. And, the stake holders could not see a sustainable business growth anymore.
Background and History:
Cucumbertown was founded by Cherian Thomas (Ex-Zynga employee), Chris Luscher (partner at Information Architects), Arun Prabhakar (software engineer) and Dan Hauk (Tumblr theme designer).
Cherian Thomas, an engineer based in Bengaluru was passionate about food and he kept recording his thoughts on cooking and publishing systematically. Chris Luscher shared his passion in cooking and agreed to partner with him. Thomas then brought on board Arun Prabhakar, and Dan Hauk.
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Cucumbertown is named after a mythical town, Vellarikka Pattanam in the Malayalam language. A team of 4 people across 3 continents, never met face to face until the launch of the company.
Dan Hauk left Cucumbertown in August 2013.
Cucumbertown is an US incorporated company with an Indian subsidiary and with two offices, one in Palo Alto, California and another Bangalore, India.
The Economic Times showcased Cucumbertown as “one of the 14 startups to look forward to in 2014”.
On October 2014, Cucumbertown released RecipeWriter, a user-friendly tool to add recipes. From late 2014, the company shifted its focus into becoming a food blogging platform.
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Funding and Acquisition:
In 2012, Cucumbertown was angel funded by Naval Ravikant of AngelList, Paul Singh of 500 Startups, Farmville co-creator Sizhao Zao Yang, founder of MightyText Maneesh Arora, Google product guy Richard Chen and Sonique Player co-creator Tabreez Varjee for the amount of $300,000.
In 2014, the second round of investment came in from Ludlow Ventures of an undisclosed amount.
In June 2015, it was announced that Cucumbertown had been acquired by Japanese Recipe network, Cookpad in an undisclosed deal.
You can go through the website before it’s get shut down: https://www.cucumbertown.com/
You can read the Goodbye note, here.
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