Premium lifestyle stationery brand NOOE has secured one of the highest deals in Shark Tank India 4 so far. Even as the valuation looked lucrative, the brand’s founders said in a recent interaction that their experience on the show was far from pleasant.
NOOE secured an investment of ₹5 crore from Lenskart’s Peyush Bansal in lieu of 51 per cent equity, valuing the company at ₹9.8 crore.
The brand’s founders Piyush Suri and Neetica Pande said that ‘sharks’ Vineeta Singh and Anupam Mittal tried to rush through the deal simply because they wanted to go home. They explained that they were trying to negotiate a deal and Aman was out so the two sharks just got up and said that there was no deal.
“We were trying to negotiate a deal and Aman was out, so they both just got up and said there was no deal and the door started opening. I then went back to Peyush and said that we were not done negotiating with him. That’s when the door closed and they again sat down,” Neetica told The Indian Express.
She added that while she understands that they were for 14 hours, they tried to rush through the deal and it felt like a loss of opportunity to the NOOE founders.
“If they were out of the deal, they just wanted to go home, so we had to stand up for that. If we hadn’t spoken up, we would have lost an opportunity.”
Her co-founder Piyush said that he empathises with the sharks since founders have to do the pitch only once but the investors have to sit for 2 months and listen to almost 12 hours of pitches.
Suri further said that the investors on the show have become very procedural and only ask questions to get answers they want, but the time founders have at hand is not enough for anyone to decide whether a business is worth investing or not.
Reacting to Vineeta Singh’s ‘business gaddhe mein hai’ comment, he said that he and Neetica wanted the brand to be seen and showcase their talent there.
“Business gadde main hai was a very funny statement. A brand like this takes a lot of money and effort to be built, it cannot be profitable from day one. If they thought the business was that bad, nobody would have given us that much money. It was not charity, but an opportunity for them to come in.”