Gaurav Taneja, aka Flying Beast's brand hits Rs 100 crore revenue after Shark Tank India rejection: ‘We've seen a lot of brands fall…'
After braving the Delhi NCR rains, Gaurav reached his office, where he showed audiences an ongoing party. In the vlog, Gaurav also included the speech that his co-founder made before their employees. 'Why are we celebrating today? The reason is, because of everybody's hard work, we are at Rs 100 cr ARR this month. This is a huge achievement. It might look easy, but we know all the abuses you've suffered, all the nights you've spent working. This is only the first milestone and we have bigger goals to accomplish, but we should celebrate every achievement because Rs 100 cr ARR is a huge deal for a start-up, and that, too, in just 13-14 months.' Gaurav also made a short speech, and encouraged his team to not take their foot of the pedal now. 'We've seen a lot of brands fall down after an upward graph, let's focus on consolidating,' he said.
Also read – Gaurav Taneja's Beast Life co-founder says they went on Shark Tank India for 'free ki marketing', saw 3x increase in sales
Previously, in a chat with Ayushman Pandita on YouTube, Gaurav's co-founder admitted that he was the one who pushed for the Shark Tank appearance. ''Thodi free ki marketing milegi, paise mil jayenge toh aur achi baat hai' so I pushed Gaurav,' he said. In a chat with Think School Hindi, Gaurav reflected on his Shark Tank experience, and said, 'They told me, 'You aren't shutting down Flying Beast (his social media channel)?' and I was like, 'What a foolish suggestion'. They are asking me shut down the platform that gave me an identity and is going to be my primary point of sales. We got a kickstart and we had an advantage, but the rest of the journey has been same as them. We didn't get anything on a plate, I have also had sleepless nights and built this distribution. I would get up at 4am and take flights.'
On the Shark Tank episode, Anupam Mittal had called Gaurav a 'terrible entrepreneur'. He said, 'When I started, I was a lot like you. I thought of myself as a star, but when you think of yourself as a star, you think you're infallible. you cant allocate time in startups, you have to be there all the time… It's not that I don't trust you, but I trust in Indian entrepreneurship, and they have so much energy, so much passion, they won't let a part-timer like you win. That's the reason I'm out.'
At an event where he shared the stage with Shark Tank judge Azhar Iqubal, Gaurav joked that he didn't learn much on Shark Tank India while he praised his fellow panelist Azhar Iqubal who is a judge on the show. Gaurav joked that generally, he learns from every experience in life. 'But wahan jaake kuch nahi seekha,' he said, as the crowd laughed. On the show, Gaurav and his co-founder asked the 'sharks' for Rs 1 crore in exchange of 1% equity, valuing their company at Rs 100 crore.
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