Fusion Garage Up For Sale
Fusion Garage CEO and co-founder Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan told BT that the firm is putting itself and its intellectual property on sale, in an effort to salvage the situation. 'Everything is being considered,' he said.

This follows reports over the past few days of the company getting dropped by its US-based lawyers and PR agency as a result of default on payments.

Mr Rathakrishnan confirmed that the company's engagements with Quinn Emanuel and McGrath Power have been suspended. He said that the company, which is majority owned by a group of Asian investors, is running out of funding, as its investors have decided that it is too expensive to continue to fund its tablet ambitions.

The fall has been steep. In 2009, US media company TechCrunch contracted Fusion Garage to develop a Web-surfing tablet device it would call the CrunchPad. The device was announced a month before Apple mentioned its first iPad, and TechCrunch received a swarm of interest and pre-orders online.

The journey has been downhill since then as iPad made history while the CrunchPad lost the race to its Apple challenger. The company's second and latest tablet product, the Grid10, has received negative reviews. To turn the situation around, Mr Rathakrishnan said, the company required a fresh injection of funds.

Its staff of about 100 based in Singapore has also been given leave of absence while the company resolves the situation, said the entrepreneur.

However, he dismissed media reports of the company's 'disappearance' as speculation.

Much of the media coverage was a result of a statement issued on Monday by McGrath Power, which stated that the company had stopped responding to it. 'Unfortunately, none of our efforts have resulted in any communication from the company to the customers. Given all of this, we don't have any other choice but to cease working with (Fusion Garage) effective tomorrow.'

Quinn Emanuel had also reportedly requested permission from the courts to withdraw from representing Fusion Garage in its ongoing US lawsuit with former editor of TechCrunch, Michael Arrington.

Fusion Garage hit the headlines in 2009 over a public falling out with TechCrunch. In December 2009, however, TechCrunch announced that the partnership was over, saying that Fusion Garage wanted to cut the US company out of the deal by spinning off the CrunchPad into a separate device that it would market on its own.

TechCrunch sued shortly after as Fusion Garage debuted its tablet, renamed JooJoo, in February 2010.

In spite of the hot interest for the CrunchPad, JooJoo suffered poor sales and received harsh reviews from technology publications.

Fusion Garage retired the JooJoo less than eight months later, but promised its new Grid10 tablet in September this year.

It hasn't brought the tablet to market yet, as a result of the freeze on operations that the company is going through, Mr Rathakrishnan said.

The company has made the Grid10 available through its website to the US, although its staff's leave of absence may be the reason that some buyers are having problems negotiating returns.

Some complained on online forums that they were having problems returning their Grid10 devices.

Mr Rathakrishnan said that the case against TechCrunch is still ongoing in the US. He had managed to get the JooJoo's manufacturing costs paid for by Malaysia's largest OEM, CSL Group, in exchange for a slice of revenue, but the Grid10 was not funded by CSL.