Who Really Killed the Crunchpad?
There hasn’t been this much tension & excitement in Singapore’s technology startup scene since Creative speakers were the best thing since sliced bread.
For those of you dwelling under rocks, here’s the story in a snap. Small Singapore startup, Fusion Garage, meets US online media juggernaut, TechCrunch, to build the world’s NEXT BIG consumer gadget – a tablet PC of sorts – named the CrunchPad. After ~2 years of work, the project crashes and burns amidst tales of secrecy, deceit, backstabbing, IP theft and the obligatory lawsuits. Spy action-worthy u say? We say just another interwebs soap opera :)
Much speculation abounds after TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington broke news of the deal failure. The finger-pointing game started and as usual, the twittersphere and blogosphere were first to step up to the jury bench. Blame has been pinned on Chandrasekhar and perhaps the secretive shareholders behind Fusion Garage. The online twitter and blog sphere has gone wild, even going as far as calling Chandrasekhar a “man-weasel”. We decided to snoop around to do some research of our own. What we came up with adds even more masala to this already spicy situation.
The Lone Shareholder?
We wanted to know who are the shareholders behind Fusion Garage. A quick check, conducted December 1 2009, with an official Singapore company directory yielded the following results:
Shareholder(s) of Fusion Garage Private Limited: Arulampalam Senthy Rani
Address: 458, Choa Chu Kang Avenue 4, Singapore.
Shareholding: 1,000,000 of 1,000,000 shares (100%).
There are NO other shareholders in Fusion Garage based on the document! Based on Arringon’s post, we understand that the email sent to Arrington was sent by “one of his shareholders”. Meaning that Fusion Garage had more than 1 shareholder, something you would typically expect for a technology company at this stage. But in this case, it was just 1 shareholder. Who is this lone shareholder? A quick Google search yielded nothing as well. We cross checked with some friends only to realize that the name belongs to a female person. We decided to dig further to check out Radixs, Chandrasekhar’s previous startup, to see if there were any clues there.
Shareholder(s) of Radixs Pte Ltd: Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan (No surprise here!)
Address: 458, Choa Chua Kang Avenue 4, Singapore. (same address as Arulampalam Senthy Rani)
Could it be that the shareholder of Fusion Garage is a family member of Chandrasekhar? If so, then it does seem that Chandrasekar’s family member is the real sole owner of Fusion Garage who entered into a formal business agreement with TechCrunch. Did TechCrunch know about this? Curious indeed.
Jealousy Killed the TechCrunch-Fusion Garage Relationship?
Who really made the Crunchpad? TechCrunch? Fusion Garage? Or both? We know all along how Arrington has longed for a tablet PC for him to surf the Internet, while lying on the couch. It was allegedly his idea and vision from the start.
Sept 2008 — Sometime around TechCrunch50 2008, Chandra and Arrington met and the love story began.
After Oct 2008 — Fusion Garage were reportedly involved into the Crunchpad project and they worked on it secretly.
Jan 2009 — Their secret love story went was publicly announced for the first time on Jan 19th. Arrington mentioned that “The software has been created by Singapore-based Fusion Garage, who continue to work with Louis on the feature set and user experience”. It was very clear then that the entire project and hardware was run by TechCrunch, with the software component done by Fusion Garage. This, coincidentally, is the exact same date which Fusion Garage got out of stealth mode, which they openly announced on their blog (the link leads to the Google cache of the blog. Scroll all the way down for the post). Today Online (a Singapore newspaper) picked this up and the focus again was on TechCrunch being in the pilot’s seat, with Fusion Garage having a more supporting role instead.
May 2009 – Chandra misses unConference 2009 as he is still working on the CrunchPad project with Arrington in US.
July 2009 — Straits Times (Singapore’s #1 newspaper) features Fusion Garage with the tagline “Set to launch tablet PC: Singapore firm launches touchscreen tablet computer”. This was a major flashpoint, we believe. See Mike Arrington’s tweet and this. The fact that the article was unilaterally blasted by Mike Arrington boiled to the early fissures in the communication relationship with TechCrunch & Fusion Garage. Was this the public beginnings of a turf war for the manufacturer Fusion Garage to plant their stake on this project? Anyhow, its ironic that Mike Arrington condemned this leak from his business partner, having being the beneficiary of many corporate leaks in the past (think Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook etc).
Aug 2009 — Nik Cubrilovic, CTO of TechCrunch, arrives in Singapore. All’s good so far, but could there have been something internally brewing unknown to the rest of us.
Nov 2009 — The CrunchPad is dead!
Based on basic PR analysis above (from both US & Singapore), it appears that the early warning signs were there before the Crunchpad’s proclaimed death. Its a huge pity that such a product with so much pre-release hype, reminiscient of Apple products, cannot come to fruition. Its also a sobering reminder to all parties that hardware is truly a cold hard bitch. The saga is far from over ladies and gentlemen. In fact, the most exciting part, will be Fusion Garage’s official response. Something we’re all looking forward to!
Disclosures: e27 hosted TechCrunch CTO Nik Cubrilovic in August this year during his visit to Singapore (link). e27 is also linked to Fusion Garage’s Founder and CEO, Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan, by way of his status as a guest speaker at our unConference this year, which was in turn given to his colleagues at Fusion Garage due to his work commitments in US. e27 has also blogged about Chandrasekhar’s previous startup. A joint article by Mohan Belani and Bjorn Lee.
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