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Mercury failed PepperTap

 

If Startup is the buzzword in the modern day Business world, Startup failure is a hard reality. In this post, we will analyze the reasons for failures of one of the start-ups PepperTap  in Management astrology terms. PepperTap was an online Grocery app based on 100% inventory less Business model. They would bring the inventory from nearby local grocery stores to their online app and provide delivery directly to the customer’s point through their well trained delivery fleet. Many articles have been written on the reasons for their failure, but we are analyzing the failure on the basis of Management Astrology (based on combined principles of Management and Astrology).

Grocery Stores are ruled by moon and thus Management Astrology assigns Cancer ascendant to this Business. What was the Brand personality of PepperTap? Excitement. Closer analysis of the Brand indicates that the Brand personality was ruled by Gemini. This means that moon sign of Brand PepperTap was Gemini (ruled by Mercury) and moon is placed in the 12th house. This is a perfect recipe for disaster. First, Mercury is a natural malefic in cancer ascendant. By eliminating inventory from the Business model, the influence of Mercury (Technology) in the whole Business increased manifolds. Second, 12th house is the house of expenditures and miseries and placement of ascendant lord in the 12th house is not favourable in this particular chart. This also indicates that the Business Model was based more on intuition (hope based on success of other start-ups). 

Does this mean that grocery start-ups based on Zero Inventory model can never succeed? They can succeed in future under certain set of circumstances. The value addition provided by PepperTap to the customers was timely home delivery without the hassles of visiting the nearby stores. If we consider the product life cycle of app based grocery purchase (combined  for Inventory models as well as Zero Inventory models), the product is in the early growth stage, and will reach early maturity stage in the next 10 years. This will ensure adequate sales volumes and hence better feasibility. We have mentioned in our previous posts that moon sign of a Brand can be changed in Management Astrology by changing the Brand Personality. PepperTap’s Brand personality was excitement. However as per astrological chart of this Business, the brand personality which is bound to be successful is Ruggedness (ruled by Aries). PepperTap based its success hopes on its well trained delivery fleet which actually means that it was trying to Project ruggedness as its Brand Personality. However, since the product is still in the early stage of PLC, Customers perceived it more as excitement rather than utility. When the product reaches further in the growth stage, and the market size grows with more players entering, the main differentiator will actually be the tough and timely performance (ruggedness) of the delivery team. Customers will start relating more to this type of Brand Personality (with the product benefit turning in to utility rather than excitement). What does it change in Management Astrology? Mars is a natural benific in Cancer ascendant and moon the lord of ascendant will be placed in Aries (Mars’s sign) in 10th house, the house of success in profession. This will be an extremely good combination in Management Astrology and will lead to success of this Business. If we sum up the failure of PepperTap, it was a futuristic Business model perhaps launched 5 years ahead of times. Why it couldn’t succeed in the present scenario was that the target segment was not fully prepared to accept this concept and thus volumes were less than the feasibility volumes. Big Basket is an Inventory based model different than PepperTap and we will try to discuss this model in Management Astrology terms in our future posts. 

Author: Kujnish Vashisht, Expedient Consultants, expedient33@gmail.com, 91-9779883347, 91-9878904347

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