Blume Ventures-backed startup RupeeStreet shuts down Moneysights.com

Moneysights.com, the website owned and operated by Bangalore-based RupeeStreet Financial Services Pvt Ltd, has been shut effective September 8. The company first made an onsite announcement for the same, which was followed by an e-mail to its subscribers. India Digital Review first reported the development.

"You may have noticed that since middle of June 2012, we haven't been updating the Stock Quotes or the Mutual Fund NAVs on the site and hence your Portfolio Values too. While we never intended to do this, circumstances forced us to stop the updates. And over the last few months, we concentrated our efforts to get back on track so that the service could continue uninterruptedly. Unfortunately, things haven't gone the way that would have been good for us and thus, to continue running moneysights has turned an economically unviable and practically impossible proposition," the e-mail announcement said.

"We made an onsite announcement this week and in case you haven't noticed that or visited moneysights in last few days, we thought of informing all our users. With deep regret, we want to inform you that moneysights would be shutting down its website effective today."

RupeeStreet, a consumer Internet start-up in the financial services domain, was founded in April 2009 by Mukesh Kalra and Santosh Navlani, who previously worked with InMobi (then called mKhoj). The site was taken out of its private beta phase and officially launched on May 20, 2011. It began with a business-to-business (B2B), subscription-driven model, but later transitioned into a consumer-focused, transaction-based model.

The company had raised an angel round of funding (undisclosed) from Prasad Duvvuri, Head, Service Delivery, India Media and Entertainment, of IBM India and Naveen Tewari, founder of the mobile ad network InMobi in early 2010. This was followed by another round ($270,000) from Blume Ventures, as well as from Naveen Tewari in February last year.

The site was competing with various online lead aggregators and financial products comparison sites such as Apnapaisa.com and Policybazaar.com by Etechaces Marketing and Consulting Pvt Ltd, among others. Other sites include BankBazaar.com, MyInsuranceClub.com, Sequoia Capital and JAFCO Asia-backed ApnaPaisa.com, InsuranceMall.in, ApnaInsurance.com, Peacock Financial Advisors Pvt. Ltd's Getmeinsure.com, Click2Insure and Insurancepandit.com by A&M Insurance Brokers Pvt. Ltd.

(Edited by Prem Udayabhanu)