Thread by @AkshayiWeb

So we had featured in #sharktankindia too but our episode has not been telecast due to reasons best known to the Channel & Sharks however I am putting down a thread for the benefit of all my entrepreneurial brethren and the public in general on Shark Tank India.

The show comprises of a 3 minute pitch followed by a Q&A with the sharks. Your pitch is designed by the Channel creatives and mostly you need to stick to it and speak Hindi, at times your USP can get diluted but that's how the scheme of things is.

The Channel will try to make your pitch as simple as possible and in chaste Hindi for the viewers to Understand. Multiple rehearsals will be done for 2 days till late nights till the Channel is sure you are good to go and some guys are given more practice and attention from the

the 1st day and if I can connect the dots I feel they are the channel's so called recommendation to the Sharks to invest, with whom they spend less time are maybe the backups or wild cards who are left in the tank to test their luck, we were one of them as all our rehearsals were

taken up last on both the days and for not more than 10 mins with no focus given to us so we thought we are really good so the channel is not worried on us and our pitch which was totally wrong in hindsight.

My wife who is also our director sales and my 11 year old daughter were also called for the side kick and TRPs :)
All said and done am still obliged & thankful to the channel's creative leads and team (frontend backend and accounts too) to show a large heart and let us pitch as

as our business is not straightforward and with pivots and a business model second to none, we tried our best to make the pitch as simple as possible and had it telecast am sure the Common Man would have understood and fellow

entrepreneurs benefitted but where we feel the problem was, is the Sharks!
Technically, we have as much business exposure as the Sharks sitting on the other side and since our Business Model is second to none and a bit against one of the Shark's Business Model is where the games

began :)
Since we were not allowed enough time to answer the Sharks in the tank as an entrepreneur and a master of my own destiny am taking it to Twitter to answer each of the Sharks, 2nd to help other contestants learn from my experience. Lap it up as much as possible!

We Digitize Universities & Colleges on a unique FREEMIUM Model and monetize on a B2B2C SaaS Enabled Marketplace play. We have 700k students and we monetize when the Students transact / pay fees via the MDR which is directly against #ashneergrover business of Zero MDR.

So when we said we have 700k students with us, his exact was "Data to Kilo ke Bhaav main Chandni Chowk pe bikta hai!!" My reply to Mr Grover is, sir, this is not a name place animal thing data like you might be capturing in BharatPe to show GMV and gain valuation & funding.

Our data is qualified student data on which we run intelligent AI for our marketplace partners. If you applied a little bit of mind and shown a little more patience you could have got that. Anyways, his whimsical reason to pass on us was that we do not have a Mobile app,

when I explained him in Hindi as English was not permitted on the show that my application is responsive and a web app so I need not have individual mobile app as my primary customer is the University stakeholder

and not the student he did not buy that argument maybe due to his poor tech sense. Be it whatever, we found his reason really amusing!!!

Before Ashneer the Shark who had a problem with us was boAt promoter #amangupta . To him our company name iWeb, its logo, our brand name IUMS - Integrated University Management System

our Less code tech name 'Agilewiz' all was a big big problem. So my reply to Aman is, Sirjee! yeh koi USB headset nai, that aasani se samaj aa jayega, thoda vakt lagega this is hightech :)

Secondly, trust me, till date I have not understood why is boAt called boAt and your company called Imagine Marketing Limited, but I can't ask, right!!!

If someday tables turn, I will ask him the same question in the same arrogant tone and with the same expression he did that to us. I mean, we are in SharkTank, selected from over thousands of applicants so the channel and their team would have done some due diligence, right?

Thoda to respect do fellow entrepreneurs ko, am here to pitch my business not take a brand name approval from you, Mr Shark!!!

#namitathapar was kind to us and debated with Ashneer to respect the grit which we have put in our business through thick and think but for Ashneer a pivot means a loss making product cover up, for him to pivot is to sin.

I want to point #ashneergrover financials to him at this point in time, 256 crores sunk in vs 6 crores revenue alive on investors and cashbags, Need I say more??

My only request to Namita was since she liked us but opted out from the fund raise due to her non understanding our tech business, she could have either opted out of all tech pitches totally since she said that to many other tech pitches OR she should have tried to understand our

space. Why do we waste one Shark's seat due to some tech incapability, right?

Next came in was LensKart #PeeyushBansal who had startedup an Education discovery platform before he started LensKart and since he could not monetize nor run it nor earn via its marketplace his fixation was that this can't scale up!

although i retorted back to him that sir, we are not a college discovery platform, we have over 250 modules and we digitize processes of a university end to end and its workflow, we are an enterprise app on a B2B2C revenue model but sir had made up his mind

that we are same like his student discovery platform which tanked so that was another pass!

Last came in the shaadi.com hero Mr #anupammittal who also had a serious problem with me pitching 1 line in gujarati which is my native language which I had done only and only at the behest of the channel to make the pitch a bit entertaining,

we had rehearsed this time and again with the channel creative and they had even advised me to use a few more gujju words just to keep the pitch light but alas it seems the Sharks were not as well trained as we were and hence twice I was asked by Mr Mittal

why did I say 1 line in Gujarati as if that pierced him like a bullet - to which I had to retort that I am a gujju so it came naturally (although I wanted to say go and ask the channel creative sirjee if this hurts u so much as its they who told me to speak this line in Gujarati!

followed by which he said tech and scale is not my worry but my issue is that you doing a B2B2C which is second to none and since you are neither a B2B nor a B2C you maybe innovated this model seeing and reading a lot of newspapers but I do not find it focussed.

so I am out as I feel you can only succeed if you focus either on B2B or B2C. Fair sir, this is your take, we still feel we are damn focussed so only India's 6 large premier Banks have signed up with us in-spite of us being offered as a solution by their competitor banks too

but none of the sharks had that much grit nor heart to dig so deep, with so many options and pitches back to back it was like a 1 minute stand, accha laga to we talk or else hava aane do :)

So net net my advise to all those pitching to SharkTank India is, only pitch if you are early stage revenue generating or looking for a seed / pre-seed round, These guys will not invest more than a crore and will take a lions share

of equity as that's how they are designed and maybe that's how the show format and their purse size is, they are in here to maximize and are paid to sit and judge Initially we had asked for our full fund raise which we tapered to half of it and then made it 1/4th seeing the trend

My personal advise is better to pitch / apply to an accelerator / incubator as they will do something more focussed and better. Here my personal opinion is that you will encounter a lot of jhoomla and arrogance

which you need to deal with but yes those who have got what they wanted here might have a different take on this so maybe this is my bias, Cheers and thanks for reading, hope this helps and remember 1 thing,

Raja raja hota hai, chahe bada ho ya chota, doesn't matter, I said the same to Ranavijay post shoot when he asked me how I am feeling, I even told him god willing I challenge the so called Sharks

and will replace them in the years to come on the show and do real justice to my fellow entrepreneurs with humility as I have been on the other side of the table too :) Cheers!!!