(5 February 2009 9:10 pm)

NEW DELHI: Publicis Groupe will be soon shutting down its online shopping website Honeyshed after it declined to invest further in the venture.

The online shopping business was funded by Publicis Groupe, Droga5 and production company Smuggler.

Honeyshed CEO Steve Greifer said, “Honeyshed’s management and Publicis jointly agreed to end the venture. It will cease operations immediately and the site will come down this week or next. The company will lay off its 10 full-time employees.”

At its relaunch earlier in November 2008 the website had projected to reach 550,000 visitors a month, 1 million by February and 2 million at the end of 2009. The site at that time had also promised advertisers that it would generate 9 million content views.

“If we had had a different economic environment we would have had a better chance of success to predict when we'd be cash positive,” added Greifer.