Shark Tank India - Insta-born startups & others leveraging the platform to build business

Feb 22, 2023

By: Srishti Magan

Credit: Wikipedia

The Insta-born startups on Shark Tank India

From relationships to business ventures, it’s all happening on social media. Naturally then, many of the startups appearing on Shark Tank India S2 were either born on Instagram or leveraged the platform to increase their sales and customer reach. Here’s a look at some of these startups:

Credit: SonyLiv

Zillionaire

Founded by Aaditya Fatehpuriya and Raghav Goyal in 2020, this Jaipur-based startup offers "bling jewellery" primarily made of silver and/or cubic zirconia. They shared their designs on Instagram and the rest, as they say, is history. They have 81.9k followers on Instagram and a clientele that includes celebrities like Ranveer Singh and Raftaar.

Credit: SonyLiv

House of Chikankari

Mother-daughter duo Poonam and Aakriti Rawal founded the House of Chikankari to promote local artisans’ craftsmanship. Launched during the first wave of lockdown on Instagram, the Delhi-based startup currently has over 200k Instagram followers. As per Instagram, the brand’s reels have garnered over 3 million views.

Credit: Instagram

Birds of Paradyes

Offering semi-permanent hair colours, this Ahmedabad-based startup was founded by Yushika Jolly and Siddharth Raghuvanshi on Instagram. In over two years, they’ve amassed 125k followers on the platform - 9k just in two days after the show aired. On average, they get 100k views on their reels, as per Instagram.

Credit: Instagram

Hoovu Fresh

Sister duo of Yeshoda and Rhea Karuturi started Hoovu Fresh in 2019 to deliver traditional puja flowers. As per Instagram, the Bengaluru-based startup has completed over 2 million orders on the platform and other online portals and their reels get more than 100k views, on average.

Credit: Instagram

Girgit

Pooja Bajaj Shah founded Girgit and introduced India's first-ever colour-changing products (apparel and footwear) for both kids and adults. The Mumbai-based startup currently has a fan following of 13.6k on Instagram.

Credit: Instagram

Avimee Herbal

The brainchild of 86-year-old Radha Krishna Choudhary, Avimee Herbal produces hair and skin care products using a mixture of ayurvedic and modern ingredients. Their first product, oil to combat hair loss, went viral after Choudhary’s daughter-in-law uploaded his video on Instagram - and it fetched 2.5 million views, organically. They have 417k followers on Instagram.

Credit: BCCL

Cakelicious

The Kolkata-based startup was founded by the mother-daughter duo of Duriya and Fatema Barodawala. Fatema left an abusive husband and sought solace in baking - when she uploaded videos of her cakes on Instagram, the positive response gave her the impetus to turn her passion into a business. Cakelicious currently has 17.6k followers on the platform.

Credit: Instagram

This startup gets one of the biggest offers on Shark Tank India, and rejects it