[John Jacob13128]

Originally Posted by GTO

Errors in financial reporting is a polite way of saying, we lied / committed fraud. Read on Economic Times that an audit by E&Y unearthed lots of fudged data, including inflating the revenue numbers, fake garages & higher payments to "favoured" garages (make of that what you will).

I feel sad for all those who have been laid off & vendors who haven't been paid in months.

By the way, this is yet another Sequoia-backed company caught in fraud. Makes me wonder if the Sequoia dudes need some more QC & monitoring of their companies.

Agree. The fundamentals of running a good business is actually this simple. But most get lost in either ROI from VC, Funds which at the end of the day are just out to 10x their capital with no interest in institution building. Honestly such blatant "misreporting" as they like to call it should send these folks behind bars.

Else we are going down a path where the scrupulous lot will just try to get more "innovative" for lack of a better word in "reporting".

[Stribog]

Originally Posted by poloman

It is hard to believe the VCs have no clue about such large scale accounting frauds. After Byju's looks like every startup is in to fudging accounts and inflating the numbers

..and this. Don't know whether to laugh or cry. Forget due diligince, common sense is missing for these big banks and VCs.
]

Big banks or ratings agencies don't believe in any due diligence. Don't forget, many large banks invested in sub prime junk CDO's. They were literally junk, but ratings agencies gave them a AAA rating. Later during a congressional enquiry they admitted that they didn't even understand the product enough to rate it.

Or Madoff ran his ponzi and some of the largest banks invested in feeder funds though apparently his returns made zero mathematical sense.

Originally Posted by GTO

Errors in financial reporting is a polite way of saying, we lied / committed fraud. Read on Economic Times that an audit by E&Y unearthed lots of fudged data, including inflating the revenue numbers, fake garages & higher payments to "favoured" garages (make of that what you will).

End of the day, with threads like these - fake customer reviews & fake AC services - how can any brand survive? If I hear from 10 people about GoMechanic, 9 are complaints & 1 is satisfied. How can you survive with a 90% dissatisfaction rate?

.

Forget "advanced" stuff like AC service, I gave my car for a wash via a Go Mechanic garage in Andheri E, they 100% didn't even wash it, except a cursory spray of water maybe and a pat down with a dirty microfiber cloth.

I made a lot of noise and they washed it with some care (as this time I insisted on staying till the work was done), but during the earlier pick up / non cleaning the driver clearly rode on wet cement and the running board picked a lot of it.

Pointed it out to the garage and was told "saar this too hard saar, paint damage saar, have to put hard acid". All of which was BS and I knew it but I just didn't want the headache anymore so ignored it as I was driving down to Chennai.

Took it to my regular wash guys, they cleaned it BRILLIANTLY, got rid of the cement also easily.

Go Mechanic charged 2k, my Chennai guys charged 800 INR. Never again will I use Go Mechanic, simply uninstalled the garbage app.

[

[100Kmphormore]

I repeatedly keep telling my friends to not trust any of the service garage startups like this or the used car/bike outlets that promise 3 free services and 1 year engine warranty etc. These are nonsense and you will be left to fend for yourself if they deny your claims due to reasons like regular wear and tear, it happens etc. Always have the service history and insurance claims checked to avoid odo tampering and nasty surprises later. Am unable to find a good 2 wheeler that is well maintained without engine roughness/rattles till now as most are dealers like Beepkart who simply buy it off and pass it to the next customer.

But after all this I only have one question - why does the employee have no security when he is nowhere to blame for a dishonest founder or a weak market and will be given the boot immediately? Where can he find a job immediately? Especially people like us who are just a year into the industry. Even the Engineering sector is not safe - especially software and newcomers to VLSI. Amazon atleast retained people who were manager and above, Google has terminated even managers. Can they not find a solution, while the CEOs keep taking their fat salary packages even in this "macroeconomic scenario" and we are fired while listening to their empathy bullshit on linkedin. Qualcomm and Intel have had internal firings during the end of 2022 and I am personally affected, being made to resign without proper documentation and serving my notice period at a service based company because the product based companies for which they hire us for have no use for us 1 year "freshers", retaining only 3+ yrs employees or the ones who currently are in projects.

Mods - please do move the post to an alternate/relevant thread if you feel this is not in context. I just wanted a perspective on this and felt it was a good place to mention.

[kiredd1005]

Originally Posted by Stribog

Go Mechanic charged 2k, my Chennai guys charged 800 INR. Never again will I use Go Mechanic, simply uninstalled the garbage app.

This is among the biggest issues with aggregator model. There is a clear disconnect between the aggregator's ethos and the partners at the grassroot level. That's why it won't work in most cases. There has to be accountability at every stage and only then will such aggregators survive, if not thrive.

[neerajku]

This is such a blatant one. A clear cut fraud to siphon off money, And the founders have an apology to offer? for a crime? May be have bot read and analysed enough. Anywhere else they would have been in Jail for long. Why would Board and investors look away or not fire them? There have always been rumours of much of such awe inspiring FDI inflow being nothing but Indian black money coming back. May be they have also been complicit and ignore these frauds as their hands are also in till.

[johannskaria]

GoMechanic taps Cars24, Spinny for a distress sale

Car repair and servicing startup GoMechanic has approached car-selling marketplaces Cars24 and Spinny among others for a potential sale, multiple sources aware of the developments told This comes a week after GoMechanic’s co-founder Amit Bhasin admitted to having laid off about 70 percent of its staff and misreporting financial performance during an ongoing funding deal.

Now GoMechanic founders have sent proposals as a part of initial talks for a potential buyout to these unicorn companies, sources said.

Gomechanic distress sale

[outdoorlover]

Originally Posted by RubberGuru1113

They should have focused on offering top notch repair, upskilling the mechanics, and delivering customer delight before expanding to other geographies or even countries, though this is easier said than done due to pressure from VCs and the “pay check to paycheck” philosophy that results.

Most of the startup founders are getting greedy to hasten the race to become an unicorn. Initial good intents are being sacrificed at the altar of revenue growth and valuations, and both customers and hapless employees are the ones who suffer.

[Totoro11]

A lot has been said above about the ethics of running startups etc etc

1. Brands take time to build. Large IT companies, for example, have evolved their business models over time, achieved stability and the chances of fraud and layoffs are slightly less compared to smaller companies. Consequently they pay you less as a way of charging brand premium. If an employee joins a startup, they are very much aware of the risk they are taking.

2. Best way to take advantage of the VC Gold Rush is to buy from a startup early when they are trying to establish their business. The first glasses i bought from lenskart cost me Rs 300 all inclusive, the second one around Rs 750 and after that there was no benefit in buying from them as the price became equivalent of market. Same case with Uber/Swiggy/Grofers/BigBasket and so on. Look for the next trend, be an early adopter and an early quitter when it comes to startups.

[CrossLife]

I'm not sure whether this belongs here, But I got refunds on cancellation of spare parts ordered in Gomechanic (close to 7k) after a long time. The cancellations were done in January siting no clarity on the delivery of the spare parts. Refund has took close to 3 months after repeated follow ups and filing a grievance in Consumer forum.

[whitewing]

It now appears Gomechanic is in talks for a sale to cartrade at a price that is almost a tenth of its previous valuation. Atleast the employees have a future.

https://themorningcontext.com/intern...ing-gomechanic

[outdoorlover]

Most of the employees are now getting laid off as GoMechanics changes hands. Perfect example of how a few unscrupulous and greedy get-rich-by-night founders can cheat customers, employees and investors all at the same time. Character is everything!