Five Irish banks spent six years on a Revolut killer — Synch never launched
Project Pegasus spotted Revolut at 30,000 customers in 2017; when Synch Payments gave up in 2023, Revolut had half of Ireland.
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2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDShopee shut its India business five months after launching it
Sea pulled Shopee out of India on 29 March 2022 — its second exit in weeks — as the Free Fire ban and a growth squeeze ended the expansion drive.
Read the caseShein's Vietnam export-base bet unravels as tariff math sends suppliers back to China
The 15ha warehouse hub near Ho Chi Minh City is down to 6ha with mass layoffs; Shein is pouring 10 billion yuan into Guangdong instead.
Read the caseSamsung fast-tracks Galaxy S25 into Japan with all three carriers and PayPay
Samsung cut its Japan launch lag from months to one week, won SoftBank back after a decade, and preinstalled PayPay to crack Apple's 56% hold.
Read the caseRed Dot Power quit Singapore's open electricity market after nine months
The Jurong pilot retailer signed 3,000 customers, stopped taking new ones in November, and exited the market in January 2019 amid a price war.
Read the casePrex bets its wallet can reach 5M Latin Americans with Chile and Paraguay launches
Uruguay's leading wallet, 2.2M users across three countries, plans Chile for 2023 and Paraguay for 2024 — with Brazilian bank Itaú holding 30%.
Read the casePneucons switched off UPI because the new 0.4% fee ate 94% of its margin
A 0.5%-commission industrial marketplace did the math on India's UPI MDR — ₹47.20 in fees against a ₹50 commission — and pulled the payment rail.
Read the casePEXA listed at a $3b valuation — and went nowhere on day one
Australia's online conveyancer priced its IPO for perfection, an outage hit the day before listing, and the stock closed just two cents above issue.
Read the casePaytm Mall burned $200M on Diwali cashbacks, then retreated from marketplace wars
Alibaba watched its Indian e-commerce bet torch $150–200M in one sales season without denting Amazon or Flipkart — and pulled the plug on the strategy.
Read the caseMoneyOwl, NTUC's bionic robo adviser, winds up after five years
The social-enterprise adviser found 45,000 account holders but only about 9,700 paying ones — 'a gap in the market, but no market for the gap'.
Read the caseGreenairy bets plant towers, not HEPA filters, can strip toxic gases from offices
Two engineers whose friend collapsed in a fume-filled makerspace built smart plant towers that claim to cut office VOCs by half.
Read the caseEuropean Sleeper's first season: 20,000 passengers on rented, rattling couchettes
The crowdfunded Dutch-Belgian night-train startup launched Brussels–Berlin in May 2023 with second-hand coaches — and is begging for €40–60M to buy its own.
Read the caseDMart Ready doubled online sales to Rs 1,667 crore in FY22 — and doubled the loss too
India's most profitable offline retailer ran its online arm on a hybrid pickup model; revenue doubled while net loss widened to Rs 142 crore.
Read the caseANZ's venture arm shut down Cashrewards, the 2.5M-member cashback pioneer
Australia's top-ranked cashback site closed abruptly in September 2025 after failing new ANZ leadership's expectations, giving members weeks to withdraw.
Read the caseCarrot, Korea's first digital insurer, sold to its parent at a loss after 6 red years
The pay-per-mile pioneer never turned a profit; Hanwha bought out investors at roughly half their 2022 price and folded it in at 98.3%.
Read the caseBYD's SkyRail: $1B and a decade later, monorails rust in Anyang and Guilin
BYD spent nearly $1B and 1,000+ engineers on monorail transit it billed for 200 cities; Beijing froze approvals and most projects died.
Read the caseAnar, an Elevation-backed B2B network for Indian SMBs, shut down and returned capital
Founded 2020, backed by Elevation, Accel and Meesho's founders, Anar listed 1.5M SMBs but could not retain buyers — it shut down after 4.5 years.
Read the caseXinja's 2.25% savings account bought deposits it couldn't monetise — and killed the bank
Australia's Xinja drew A$250M of deposits with a no-strings savings account, had no loans to earn with, and handed back its licence 11 months after launch.
Read the caseN26 shut its Brazil pilot to refocus on Europe, after axing 500,000 US accounts in 2021
Europe's flagship mobile bank ended its two-year Brazilian test in November 2023, its second retreat from outside Europe in two years.
Read the caseMilkrun burned $86M on 10-minute grocery delivery — and shut when the money dried up
The dark-store grocer backed by Tiger Global and Airtree promised delivery in 10 minutes with salaried riders; 18 months after launch it was gone.
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