How has Season 2 been for you in terms of deals?

I have invested in a lot more startups. And I have done a lot of solo deals, exciting deals in the B2C space, in the tech space. Overall, if you look at Shark Tank India season 2, while startup investing has dropped 60-70% globally and in India, it doesn’t feel that way in season 2.

Overall, how many deals took place this season, compared to last season?

We have seen more than double the deals from what were struck last season. It is at a global scale. It can compete with US Shark Tank and amount per investment is also much higher. If you watch Shark Tank India Season 2, you will not feel that there is any winter for startup funding. There has been much higher conversion, better-prepared founders, wholesome pitches, lot of fights for deals, lot of competition.

The number of startups you had invested in up until end of last season was 220. After the end of Season 2, how many startups have you ever invested in?

I am not just investing through Shark Tank India. I am also investing outside Shark Tank. So, if you ask me how many companies I have invested in, of course many of them have shut down, many of them I have exited. But overall, I have invested in somewhere between 260 to 270 startups, on a cumulative basis.

Any startups that took you by surprise this season?

So, there are a couple of 18-year-old boys, who are building a global brand from India. Not just Bollywood, but Hollywood celebrities are flaunting their products. I was just blown away. The company is called Zillionaire. Hollywood celebs are putting their products on Insta, even Bollywood A-listers.

There is one lady, building a business called Sharma Ji Ka Aata. You can find Aata Chakki (flour mill) in every nukkad (street corner), but who would have thought that such a business will come on Shark Tank India for funding. And there is an inspiring and moving story behind this founder, on how after she got separated from her husband, how she supported her family through complete poverty, to now building a business to support her family.

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Then there was another story that blew me. After Season 1, I was quite inspired by how the startup ecosystem was going to the next level. But when it comes to venture capital (VC) funding, people who already have the access to right networks, who come from IIT/IIM backgrounds, good backgrounds, who can package their propositions and tell a story, are the ones who mostly get VC funding. But most of India is not like that. Most of India doesn’t even know how to write a business plan.

So, how can these people go to the next level? How can they get a start? You can only get VC funding, once you have a start.

So, we envisioned something called dreamdeal.me on Instagram. We said let’s take away all the barriers of startup funding. All you need to do is make a 30-second reel and send it to us. All you have to tell me is what you want to do, why you want to do it and how will use the money. And we will give you a grant without any equity to build a proof of concept, so that you get a start. The first step is the most important in a thousand-mile journey.

So, we gave grants to three companies. Incredibly, when I was sitting on the sets of Shark Tank India, I see this company called Mahantam. When I had given grant to this company, they had not even given a name to the company.

So, I saw this name Mahantam and this tea glass washing machine. He has built this machine for lakhs of tea-sellers in India because they do it so unhygienically or have to spend money on paper glass. So, this was a personal grant I had given to them and this guy came to the show.

He is a 20-year-old boy, who comes from a village of 3,000 people, in Gujarat. He is doing this with his brother. How are they going to make a business plan? But he can also identify problems because they experience it themselves. He saw problem with this tea vendor that he was not washing his tea glass, because it was too expensive. But who was going to give him funding to solve this problem? He couldn’t even make a prototype of the washing machine. He came to Shark Tank Season 2 and I was blown away. I was shaking when I saw this guy. And whether he got the funding or not, or how and how much he got — For that, you’d need to see Shark Tank India.

But the fact that he got here means that we would have done something right. And this grant was given three-four months back. I had no idea that he would actually make it to Shark Tank India.

What criteria are used on Shark Tank to shortlist the startups that get to make their pitches?

They look at the idea, its potential, the market, the founder, the purpose. They believe that if the founder has potential, the business has potential, then they can possibly get funding from Sharks like us.

Have you exited from any startup invested on Shark Tank?

No, it is too early to exit.

How are you monitoring these investments?

We maintain an MIS (Management Information System). We have a team that looks at it. If they (the startup founders) need help, we reach out. I talk to them on WhatsApp Video or Zoom or sometimes they come to the office. We filmed a couple of them as well when they came to office and put them on my YouTube channel. So, monitoring is simply MIS, but help is as and when they need it.

Are you able to divide your time between so many startups?

Certainly, it is stretching us all bit. Many of the companies that invest outside Shark Tank India are not early-stage businesses like the ones that come in Shark Tank India. Also, the founders you are investing in outside Shark Tank India are different from the founders you are investing on Shark Tank India.

People coming on Shark Tank India need more handholding. Because a lot of times, they are family members that have come together to run a business, mother and child, sister and brother. These people don’t typically get funding from outside. They have just started their business.

They don’t understand the language of startup, what is Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization), go-to-market strategy, etc. They understand dhandha (business), but don’t know how to scale it.

So, obviously, it is going to take lot more handholding and time from us. And we have all had to stretch.

We still continue to run our own companies. We run our companies and we come here (Shark Tank India sets) on weekends. Now, when we go back, we will run our companies in the week. And we will mentor these people on the weekends. So, clearly, it is going to take lot more time and lot of sacrifice from our families. Forget us. For us, it is an adrenalin rush, it is giving back, but it takes away lot of our family time. It is a sacrifice from our family members also.

But we are doing this because we think the country needs it. Why should only a privileged set of people get funding? This show has given a lift to India’s entrepreneurial spirit. So, we feel it is our duty. In Spider-Man movie, there is a famous dialogue –with great power, comes great responsibility. I say with great privilege, comes great responsibility.

So, how do you decide when it comes to investing with a co-shark. Do you’ll have a set of parameters?

Woh aankhon, aankhon mein baat hoti hain (laughs). We try and make eye contact first to gauge each other’s interest.

Who is your favourite co-shark to invest with?

My favourite shark to invest with is myself. I like to do solo deals. I don’t care about deals being accepted or not accepted. I look at how I can make my returns. I look at how I can make an impact for the country, world, for the founder. If I see that thing is coming through that I can make my money back and more, and we can create an impact, then I go in. I don’t care who is coming in. And then if somebody wants to join, whoever it is, if they bring complementary strengths, then I’m okay with it. If not, then I say no, I want to do it by myself.

Your deals have mostly been solo?

No, but a lot of them have been solo.

Last season, target addressable market (TAM) of a business was a major criterion for you to decide whether to invest in a startup or not. Were there any pitches, where you were willing to compromise on TAM?

There were a few deals. I will give you one story. This little girl in her 20s had lost her father. She, along with her father, was working on this device for impaired mobility, for handicapped people. They had spent years on developing the device and he suddenly passed away. Now, she is the only bread-winner.

Now, that market is not that large in India. So, how do you justify. Either you go global, or you come up with more bio-medical devices, that are not just about mobility. So, at that point, one has to ask the question – Is this founder really worth taking a bet on? Because there are a lot of companies, where there was no market size really when they started.

When Google started, there was no market size, when Facebook started, there was no market size. When Shaadi.com started, there was no market size. They had to create the market. So, sometimes, when you see a founder, who seems like they can go the distance, 5-10-20 years, then the bet is on the founder, they will create the market. So, while I think small markets are very unforgiving, large markets are very forgiving; sometimes, you have to take bets on market creation and the ability of the founder.

What have been some of your other learnings?

The other leaning is that Indian founders are not just building for India, they are building for the world. Earlier, my valuation criteria were very focused on India. Now, it is becoming very evident that a lot of confidence has come in among Indian founders. I think Shark Tank season 1 had a role to play in that. And the evolution of the ecosystem has a role to play in that. The Indian youth are not afraid of anything. Now, a lot of people are coming to build businesses for the world. Like I gave you the example of Zillionaire. That’s a global story in my view. Mahantam — the tea glass washing business — is an Indian story.

Sharma Ji Ka Aata is again an Indian story. But there are enough global stories that I am seeing. So, I am changing my lens a little bit and saying if not in India, or in addition to India, can we look at the market globally? So, that changes the criteria or the lens a bit.

The other learning is on product-market fit. Maybe last year, I was looking for little more evidence of product-market fit. This year, I have realized that these founders coming on Shark Tank are very different than what we are used to outside of Shark Tank. For example, there was a girl that came last year, she was making a company of soaps. Not lotions, which is where the market has gone.

She was making mithai-shaped soaps, chocolate-shaped soaps. Everybody thought, including me, that this seems odd, what about the market size, etc. Who wants to buy mithai-shaped soap? And if you buy it, why will anyone use it, because then the shape would go away.

But there was something about the space and the founder that I thought was very interesting because I felt that the body and bath market was still not tapped in India. Beauty segment was going crazy, but nobody had cracked this segment. And I thought that this girl was coachable and could be mentored. Instead of making just these fancy-shaped soaps, we can direct her to bath and body type of market.

I ended up owning a third of the company. Because you need to own some of these companies to that extent, if you want to give that kind of time. But in less than a year, she has gone to ten-times sales, when everybody else in Shark Tank thought that this was an absurd idea, I invested.

She is now doing several crores a year and would probably open a store next year. So, our go-to-market strategy becomes these fancy-shaped soaps, where people say have you seen this ice-cream shaped soap, but once you go, you can buy body lotion, you can buy body wash. So, I think she has got a very unique proposition in terms of go-to-market strategy and then creating loyalty to other products. So, I think it is going be very exciting.

So far, which has been your successful investments from Shark Tank India’s last season?

We don’t know that, unless we exit. Let us just use growth as a parameter. There is Saas Bar. The other is Skippy, which was an all-shark deal, which I led. There is Hair Originals, which I and Peyush (Bansal) did. They have just raised a million dollars. More than a crore a month in terms of revenues. So, I think in terms of growth, in terms of capital-raising, these are some of the companies. Yarn Bazaar is another company which is creating a B2B marketplace for yarn and textiles. Lot of VCs have got excited about them. They have also grown dramatically from last year.

Were there any deals this season that you came quite close, but missed out on?

Quite a few actually, I don’t remember. But I made offers of upto ₹10 crore, individually, without other sharks. But sometimes, because of chemistry, dynamics, your offer doesn’t get accepted. That is fine. I look for great investments, great founders. I don’t care whether my offer gets accepted or not. I believe I will make money and if the founder has a story that deserves backing and we can create an impact, I go out and make an offer, whether it is a loan or with equity.

Is there any possibility that in future, where even viewers watching Shark Tank India from their homes, will be able to participate in the deals?

So, even Shark Tank India has a concept called ‘Be a Home Shark’, which is just a game right now. But just like KBC evolved, to then allow viewers to play along and make money, I think there will be an evolution. We don’t know as yet. There are regulations in the country, you can’t just take money from average person. So, I think we will go step by step. This is only Season 2. The government is also very startup friendly. So, I am sure they will also support if we can figure out the risks. There are conversations, but these are very early conversations. We have to factor in so many things, regulations, the government, people’s money, etc. These are high-risk investments, not for the faint-hearted.

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