‘Wanted to be treated as a prodigy’: 19-yr-old healthcare app founder loses Shark Tank deal due to overconfidence

In the latest season of Shark Tank India, a 19-year-old founder impressed the sharks with his earlier success in building multiple startups. At the start of his pitch, Himanshu Rajpurohit, the 19-year-old founder of the healthcare app Nexera.Health, claimed that he has already built 2 businesses before and sold them to start a third one successfully. 

Nexera.Health is an end-to-end healthcare platform for corporates and focuses on preventive care, diagnostics, and telehealth. The platform also aims to improve employee health and productivity. 

Rajpurohit sought a funding of ₹75 lakh in exchange of 1.5 per cent equity stake in his company. He also mentioned that OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal inspired him to start his journey as an entrepreneur at a young age.

Despite an impressive start, the 19-year-old entrepreneur failed to bag the deal from the sharks due to his overconfidence.

The pitch went viral on social media. Needless to say, the netizens were irate at the young founder’s overconfidence and called the pitch “hard to watch”. “Wanted to be treated as a prodigy,” a social media user commented. “His arrogance was next level,” a second user wrote.

“His webpage was tremendously misleading. Our partners, get had AWS, Microsoft, etc. The whole pitch seemed like a scam as soon as the website was shown. No wonder all the sharks dropped out right away,” a third user wrote. 

“Nexera pitch was hard to watch. The pitcher kept tooting his own horn non-stop. I still don’t know what his product is cause I tuned out mid way. Too much bak bak,” another user said. 

While Kunal Bahl was unsure of the app’s appeal to CFOs, Vineeta Singh questioned the young founder on the viability of his app in a saturated market. 

While Rajpurohit did not seem to have an answer to these questions, the situation only got worse when he said that he is on the show for mentorship and he could have raised investment from elsewhere.

This reply irked boAt Lifestuyle co-founder Aman Gupta, who accused Himanshu of having a “hangover of successor that reflects in your third business”. Bahl also pointed out that the 19-year-old apparently rushed to build a new version of the app only 2 days before his appearance on Shark Tank India, which further made the sharks sceptical.

Not only this, Emcure Pharmaceuticals executive director Namita Thapar also refused to make an offer, citing the lack of differentiation in the app.