this week stayzilla said its rebooting its not the first startup to have changed track to find an idea that will click as competition heats up and investors tighten their purse strings many founders pivot to stay relevant in less than three years vipul mishra has refashioned his startup or pivoted six times mishra started canvasflip in august 2014 as an online animation platform in about two months when he couldnt find the right customers he turned its focus to hr gamification then to explainer videos to marketing banners to interactive ads and to inapp mobile onboarding before switching paths again in june 2015 and he finally seems to have hit the jackpot with a platform for companies to test the usability of their apps id told myself that if this attempt didnt work id give up and go work for a startup he says luckily it did canvasflip now works with around 300 customers in india and abroad in the startup world pivoting is course correction that can mean anything from tweaking a product or service to a complete revamp of a business thats not going anywhere and as investors get cagey and the competition heats up with more foreign entrants founders are finding that they need to be nimble about pivoting in order to survive i meet about 10 entrepreneurs a week who have pivoted their business says mishra the latest is homestay aggregator stayzilla its founder yogendra vasupal said in a blog post this week that he is bringing to a halt the operations of stayzilla in its current form and looking to reboot it with a different business model stayzilla had raised close to 35 million from matrix partners and nexus ventures but it wasnt enough to take on the competition from players like airbnb and makemytrip newly merged with ibibo in the post vasupal said the company had spread itself too thin and had been affected by discountingbased growth rampant in the travel industry mohan kumar of investment firm norwest venture partners says different reasons trigger pivots based on the stage the venture is at for an earlystage startup a pivot is part of the discovery of what is working and what isnt it is highly likely that most startups would have changed course in finding a productmarket fit he says another example of an earlystage startup making a switch is yellow messenger which started as a consumerfacing chatbot helping users connect with brands in a year it changed to serving business needs the platform which was burning rs 8 lakh a day is now positive in revenue but yellow messengers founder raghu ravinutala doesnt want to term his shift a pivot i havent used the word a lot it was more of a tactical change he says microsoft ventures which helped yellow messenger make the change during its accelerator programme says the word is used too loosely it is used more commonly than you want it to be says bala girisabala ceo