After a China retreat, Singapore's Select Group expanded Southeast Asia properly
Select Group's 2005 China canteen venture failed in four years; its second bet — researched, adapted, agency-assisted — put 27 stores in three SEA hubs.
Lire le casstartups.centerUNE ARCHIVE CASESTUDIES.CHAT
Chaque entreprise
a un début.
Comment les entreprises ont démarré, trouvé leur place et affronté la suite.
Toutes les archives, dans l’appLes articles sont disponibles en anglais et en chinois simplifié. Les titres et textes conservent leur langue de publication.
Cas publiés
2,000 CAS PUBLIÉS · MIS À JOUR RÉGULIÈREMENTSamsung's four finance arms built one app, Monimo — and it stalled at 2.2M MAU
Samsung Life, Fire & Marine, Securities and Card launched a unified app with 25M potential users; a missing MyData licence and no control tower left it at 2.2M.
Lire le casPlynk touted a record €25M Series A, then missed the milestone and froze
Plynk's €25M round was released only in tranches against metrics; when it missed, the money stopped, staff went unpaid and signups froze.
Lire le casOra Pharm turned cannabis red tape into a business: processing and export for others
Waikato's Ora Pharm launched processing-and-export services for other cultivators and became the sole NZ supplier on AI trading platform CanXChange.
Lire le casOpenAI's ChatGPT for Teens promised safeguards — Common Sense rated it unsafe
Common Sense Media found engagement cues persisted even in crisis conversations, and break reminders appeared just twice in nearly 2,000 prompts.
Lire le casBalaji Srinivasan built his network-state school inside Malaysia's $100B ghost city
Nearly 400 students pay from $1,500 a month in Forest City — a failed megacity at 2% of its planned population — to beta-test Srinivasan's startup societies.
Lire le casChile's Mundo spent $2.5M to become an MVNO on Telefónica's network
The fixed-line group with Chile's second-largest fiber network added a fourth product — mobile — betting on bundles and fair prices in a brutal market.
Lire le casMeesho shut its Superstore grocery bet in 90% of cities a year after launch
Meesho's grocery vertical, rebranded in April with a 12-state pledge, was shut in over 90% of cities by August; about 300 staff lost jobs.
Lire le casKakao's Kanana AI agent faded to 66 installs a day after launching outside KakaoTalk
Korea's chat giant launched its group-chat AI as a standalone app — daily installs fell from a 19,000 peak to double digits within five weeks.
Lire le casFuture Retail's fourth e-commerce attempt: the Future Pay wallet became a superapp
A week into India's Covid lockdown, Kishore Biyani converted a 2016 wallet app into a shop-from-BigBazaar superapp — his fourth try at e-commerce.
Lire le casEuropean Sleeper's Brussels-Venice maiden run stalled at the Italian border
The Dutch-Belgian startup's new five-country sleeper — launched with EU fanfare — couldn't enter Italy on night one; passengers switched trains in Innsbruck.
Lire le casElasticRun wound up its nine-month urban pilot to double down on rural FMCG
After cities like Delhi, Bhopal and Indore proved too cash-hungry, the SoftBank-backed B2B startup retreated to the rural business that is 98% of revenue.
Lire le casCapillary burned its $15.5M round in 18 months, then shut four markets (interview)
Flush with Sequoia and Norwest money, the SaaS startup opened 10 countries at once, came within 15 days of zero, and shut four of them (interview).
Lire le casBskin bet bee actives could carry a skincare brand — and won Indonesia first
A lawyer-turned-founder built HDI's bee-active skincare line Bskin; its biggest sales came from Jakarta and Surabaya, not Singapore.
Lire le casARN's $200M bet that Sydney's top radio show would work in Melbourne failed
ARN signed Kyle and Jackie O to a $200M deal and piped the Sydney show into Melbourne; Melbourne ranked it 8th and the partnership imploded.
Lire le casAllbirds' first non-shoe product: socks made of plants, wool and recycled bottles
In August 2019 the US$1 billion wool-shoe unicorn launched Trino socks, betting its materials-first formula could stretch beyond one product.
Lire le casWeWork signed a 10-year Auckland lease, announced it loudly — then exited silently
Eight floors of Queen Street were promised to 1,300 kiwi workers; the renovations never happened and the pullout came with no press release.
Lire le casVirgin Mobile Chile rode out a price war by aging with its customers
The MVNO fell from 360,000 subscribers to 196,542 under WOM's price war, then pivoted to data-heavy 20-40s and SME IoT to claw back to 217,000.
Lire le casLoob scaled Tealive to 800 stores on Creador's stake before any IPO
Southeast Asia's biggest bubble-tea chain by store count took Creador's 30% in 2021, deferred its IPO, and targeted 1,000 Malaysian stores by 2024.
Lire le casTata and Tesco's Star bet on Indian grocery — 16 years on, it had 57 stores
India's biggest conglomerate and one of the world's largest grocers ended up with 3.6% of Reliance Retail's grocery revenue and 5% of DMart's topline.
Lire le cas