Gaurav Taneja, the popular YouTuber and fitness influencer known as Flying Beast recently appeared on the Shark Tank India pitching his supplements brand, BeastLife. Taneja valued his company at Rs 100 crore and sought Rs 1 crore for a 1% stake. He pitched the brand’s success, claiming to earn a revenue of Rs 1 crore within the first hour of its launch. However, the Sharks were skeptical of the YouTuber’s dual-focus strategy, questioning its long-term sustainability and potential for growth.
In a candid LinkedIn post after the episode aired, Taneja shared his reflections on the experience. “Shut down YouTube and go all in on one business. That’s the advice I got from some Sharks on Shark Tank India,” he wrote in the post. He further revealed that during the pitch, one of the sharks questioned him whether he will continue making videos for YouTube. To which he replied with a confident ‘Yes’.
“He didn’t seem too happy with my response and remarked, ‘𝘈𝘢𝘱 𝘬𝘢 𝘧𝘰𝘤𝘶𝘴 𝘯𝘢𝘩𝘪 𝘩𝘰𝘨𝘢, 𝘢𝘢𝘱 𝘸𝘢𝘩𝘢 𝘴𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘴𝘢 𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘦.’,” he stated. “But to me, that felt like a risky move — one that could hurt more than help,” he added.
Anupam Mittal questions Gaurav Taneja’s business model
In the episode, now airing on SonyLIV, one of the sharks – Anupam Mittal can be seen questioning the social media influencer. 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 can’t 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. They won’t let a part-timer like you win,” he further remarked.
Gaurav Taneja raises doubts on Shark Tank
In another LinkedIn post, Taneja alleged the diminishing impact of Shark Tank. He wrote: “We recently took BeastLife to Shark Tank India and it was a fantastic experience! Many tout the show as a tremendous branding tool—even if you don’t secure a deal, the exposure is priceless.
Naturally, we anticipated a huge spike in website traffic, given the strong brand value and massive audience Shark Tank has built over four seasons. But here’s what the numbers revealed:
🔹 Traffic on Rosier Foods launch day: 𝟰𝟬𝟴𝗞
🔹 Traffic on BeastLife launch day: 𝟮𝟯𝟴𝗞
🔹 Traffic on and after hashtag#SharkTank release day: 𝟮𝟮𝗞
Surprisingly, the traffic from Shark Tank was even lower than the push from our own Instagram Stories!
This raises an important question: Has the impact of Shark Tank diminished? Here are some possible reasons we considered:
1️⃣ Shark Tank India might be losing popularity
2️⃣ The show may gain traction once episodes are uploaded to YouTube (making it free to watch for a larger audience)
3️⃣ Skipping a TV broadcast for Season 4 was a strategic misstep
What do you think? Has the allure of Shark Tank waned, or is it just a matter of timing and platform shifts?”.
