Hello sharks.

Mera naam hai Saad Aman Sayyed aur main Reddit ke r/sharktankindia se hun. Main likhta hun relatable, simple bhasha mein posts and comments jo aap ki madat kar sakte hain aap ke startup ko badhane aur Shark Tank India pe kamyaab karne ke liye.

Main aap se chahunga 50 paise for 1% equity. To sharks, kya aap entrepreneurship ki is nayi wave ka hissa banna chahenge? Kya aap, yaani ki reader, is wave ka hissa banna chahte ho? Agar haan, to continue reading on because in this post, I will share some of the insights from my own viewing and from videos/interviews/articles around the internet. Let's get started!

The Business

To baat karte hai dhande ki. Your business is what you're selling equity in, so, you might be Prince Charming, but the Shark Tank judges will give first and foremost consideration to the business kyun ki paisa unka us mein jaa raha hai. Vineeta Singh, one of the sharks, told Shewta Punj, deputy editor at India Today in this interview:

The presentation was a very important part of it, but the most important part was the numbers.

This tells us you need sales -- and profitability irrevocably to have a successful chance at Shark Tank India. Poorva, a young girl in her 20s who pitched her educational fin-tech platform Good Good Piggy was criticized very brutally by the sharks. One of the reasons was her jargonish presentation, aur hum pitching ke baaren mein baat karenge, but, the other reason was she had nothing to back up her idea -- she hadn't made a single paisa from the platform. In fact, it is not even available on the Google Play Store or App Store.

Kyunki the sharks will be putting in their hard-earned money on your business, make sure ki aap ke paas proof hai -- essentially you need two things -- a] sales and b] prototype. Now, let's talk a little bit more about industry.

CHOOSE YOUR INDUSTRY AND CHOOSE YOUR SHARK

Well, the more the merrier, laikin particular sharks are going to take interest/invest in your business more than the others. This is because sab ki kuchh na kuchh expertise hai, and as Namita Thapar infamously says, yeh meri expertise nahin hain, I'm out.

Let's first talk about Industry. India in Pixels ki ek badi hi dhaansu video hai. Out of the total of 67 businesses that got funding in Season 1, a total of 15 were from food. Uske baad hai lifestyle coming in at 12. To, this might make you think, let's create a food/lifestyle brand. Laikin, is stat mein thoda sa doglaapan hai, aur main use utarta hun. This is because food/lifestyle mein kaafi low barrier-to-entry hota hai, aap ko khud ka proprietary tech develop nahin karna hota hai, this is the reason ki most of the startups pitched were from these industries. But, inka success ratio utna high nahin hai. Do you know which industry did best?

Tech and Transportation.

Technology is tied at third position along with healthcare, and there's a reason. Tech is proprietary, yaani tum is ko banane ke rights apne paas reserve kar sakte ho. Tech is also booming -- and if you bet on the right startup, it can be a big, big return. That's why you can always bet on this space if you have a good product. Transportation might have not gotten deals, laikin every transport startup that came didn't go empty-handed. Hence, the industry that you could be pointing your eyes towards is the Tech and Transport industry.

But, kaunse shark ko pitch karun? So, from the same video, this post clearly shows the figures. Assuming that ki same seven sharks Shark Tank India ke agle season mein hain, you can't ignore one name -- Namita Thapar. Thapar, one of the seven sharks, appeared in 32 episodes, the second-most in all sharks, laikin phir bhi, she invested only 6.6 cr (for context, Aman and Piyush invested 8-9 cr each). Iska to popular meme bhi hai.

Well, she, unlike Aman (who was odd one out here, putting a lot of money into food), but like the other sharks, is a pretty expertise-based, niche investor. Kyunki her expertise and dhanda is that of healthcare and pharma, she prefers those startups to say, clothing startups.

But, kahaani yahan khatam nahin hoti. She is actually not having any doglaapan here, since she invested twice as much in healthcare compared to the all-shark average.

Okay, but, what if you are bringing in tech? Well, tech second-highest investment sector hai. Laikin, yahan pe industry ke 3 huge players baithe hai. Fintech ke duniya ke maharathi Ashneer Grover and Headphones ki duniya ko hila dene wale Aman Gupta to hai hi, but we also have Peyush Bansal, a full-on tech nerd who spent more than half of his more than a million dollars of investment into tech. If you get Peyush, you're basically swimming in a "shark tank" with the protection of a whale.

But, lets say, aap clothing and lifestyle wale bande ho. If that's the case, then Vineeta Singh and Ghazal Alagh got your back! They are involved in this business, aur, they are known to support young entrepreneurs in this industry.

To phir, that's the round-up on industry and sharks. But, who do you send to pitch? How do you pitch? Kitna paisa lena hai aur kitni company deni hai? Well, that's for this next part, The Pitch Room.

THE PITCH ROOM

As said in the previously-mentioned video, aap kis ko bhejto ho matters. While husband-wife duos made a good portion of the deals, trios, groups of four (both genders) and duos/single men did best. Ab ho sakta hai this is proof ki you send in multiple people (i.e. co-founders). Ya fir, ye bhi proof ho sakta hai ki its still pretty male-dominated. Either ways, do ladke bhej do. I also wanted to talk about who you bring -- remember ki co-founders always take preference. Kaafi saare young entrepreneurs apne mentors ko saath le ke aaye, but, is se kuchh khaas positive effect aaya nahin. Speaking of that, remember, young people generally get more deals, and so do the oldest people.

Ab chalte hai paise ki taraf. So, generally, any valuation under 10 cr is likely to stay that way. The highest ever valuation that the show saw was nearly 66 cr. But, you, are likely to get funding if you offer more equity, jo ki zyada incentive to help you deta hai sharks ko by giving them a bigger say in how things are done. It also depends on how much capital you need. Say, aap ki company 2 cr ke sales karti hai. And its in the transport sector, so we will use a 4x or 5x multiplier and say aapki company is worth somewhere around 8-10 cr. Ab aap ne first model bana diya, laikin aap ko supply chain form karne mein dikkat aa rahi hai. Then, what do you do? Well, aap zyada paisa maang lenge. Say, you need 1 cr. Here, you'd be offering 10% of equity. What if you need more? Well, then, you need to know whether aap ko equity zyada valuable lagti hai, yaa fir investment. You can get 2 cr if you offer 20%, par... aap less money ke badle 5% dilute karte ho. India in Pixels recommends 50 lakh for 5%, which I agree with. However, agar aap ko equity aur paisa dono pyaara hai, to there's a third way. A sharky way. If you have the ability to repay it, you can split 50 lakh of that 1 cr in debt and equity. This way, aap 5% company ke badle 1 cr le paate ho -- shart itni ki aap 50 lakh repay kar do. Valuation decide karte samay, remember that anything beyond 100 cr is a total joke if you don't have at least 25 cr in sales, and that proprietary technology with working prototypes, high revenue ya market ki bhookh ko prove karke hi aap us valuation ko achieve kar paayenge. As a rule of thumb, double your sales for food, lifestyle, clothing and sports, and quadruple for other industries.

CLOSING REMARKS

I had a lot of fun writing this for you! Agar aap ka business next season ke liye select hota hai, to do mention in the comments. India mein entrepreneurship ki lahar aa gayi hai, and I'm doing my best to help you ride those waves! Agar aap ko koi questions hai, fire straight away! That being said, bahot mehnat lagi, so, I would love an upvote. Aap se milte hai Shark Tank Gyaan ke agle installment mein!

​

---

SOURCES & LINKS:

1. https://www.indiatoday.in/newsmo/video/shark-tank-india-sugar-cosmetic-vineeta-singh-guide-write-perfect-investment-pitch-startup-101-1916584-2022-02-23?jwsource=cl
2. https://goodgoodpiggy.com/
3. https://odysee.com/@iip:b/sharktank:3
4. https://www.reddit.com/r/sharktankindia/comments/sql7u0/distribution_of_the_sharks_investments_in/