Spice Story ₹70 Lakhs for 5% Equity Win on Shark Tank India

Spice Story was founded in 2019 by Soumyadeep Mukherjee, Vibhor Rastogi, and Gayatri Gogate, with a focus on providing a variety of delicious chutneys. Their aim is to share the flavors of street food throughout India, making their products available on their website and popular platforms like SwiggyInstamart, Zomato, Big Basket, Flipkart, and Amazon. Their products can be found in 1700 stores across five cities, demonstrating the brand’s rapid growth and wide reach. On Shark Tank India Season 2, Spice Story sought an investment of INR 70 lakhs in exchange for a 2% equity stake.

Click here to visit their official website: Spice Story

The company’s sales have been growing significantly every year. In 2019-2020, they made 1.5 crore rupees, which increased to 2.5 crore rupees in 2020-2021. Then, in FY 2021-2022, their sales rose to 4.1 crores. Their most recent monthly sales reached 57 lakhs rupees, with a net of ₹32 lakh, showing a strong expected sales figure of Rs. 9 crores. The founders of Spice Story put 65 lakhs of their own money into the business and successfully secured two rounds of investments. In 2021, they raised 1.7 crore rupees at a pre-money valuation of 10.6 crores. This was followed by a raise of 3 crores in 2022 at a pre-money valuation of 23 crores, demonstrating their growth and investor confidence.

Related: Very Much Indian: ₹50 Lakhs for 10% Equity Win on Shark Tank India

In 2019, Spice Story was created by Soumyadeep Mukherjee, Vibhor Rastogi, and Gayatri Gogate. Soumyadeep, who is the CEO, has experience in distribution across 5 different countries. Gayatri and Soumyadeep were colleagues at a previous workplace. Currently, Soumyadeep owns 38% of the company, Gayatri holds 12%, while Vibhor has 4%. Additionally, there are two former co-founders who collectively own 21% of the company.

Aman, Anupam, and Vineeta decided not to invest for different reasons. Aman felt the founders’ plan didn’t meet his expectations, Anupam was concerned about the founders’ and Chef’s equity, and Vineeta didn’t like that the products were not making a profit.

Peyush and Namita, however, were still interested. Peyush was worried about the company’s financial situation and decided not to invest. Namita, on the other hand, offered 70 lakh rupees for 5% of the company, valuing it at 14 crore rupees. Even though Peyush stepped out, Namita stood by her offer. After some consideration, the founders accepted Namita’s offer of 70 lakh rupees for 5% of the company, and they shook hands on the deal.

Our investigation into the company revealed that despite appearing on Shark Tank India, their deal with Namita did not go through after the episode aired. Soumyadeep, on a podcast called The Story Beneath, expressed his enjoyment of the Shark Tank experience. Following the show’s airing, Spice Story shared on social media that they received a lot of love, messages, inquiries, and orders.

As of July 2024, the company is still operating. It appears that they managed to secure funding from other sources, as they had mentioned during the pitch that their financial runway would only last until December of the previous year. Although the company’s financial details have not been made public yet, we will update this article when more information becomes available.