Planyt on Shark Tank India Season 5 Episode 4 – High Hopes, Hard Reality

An inventive concept based on plant growth technology was presented in the eagerly awaited Shark Tank India Season 5 Episode 4, but this time the boardroom drama wasn’t about closing a transaction. After intense inspection from all five Sharks, Planyt, a firm that promised to transform indoor plant production with cutting-edge technology, left the Tank without investment.

The audacious promises made in this episode, together with the ensuing inquiries and the Sharks’ unanimous decision not to fund the firm, made it a discussion point for both viewers and entrepreneurial fans.

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Shubham Upadhyay founded the Vadodara, India-based firm Planyt, which focuses on developing high-tech plant growth systems that allow for automated, highly efficient production in homes and urban environments. The company’s main product is a gadget made with fogponics, a technique for misting plant roots with nutrients and oxygen.

Upadhyay’s goal with Planyt was to use state-of-the-art technologies to combat world hunger and revolutionize the way people cultivate plants in limited spaces. He confidently presented Planyt as a future-ready solution for food security and innovative domestic farming when he presented this mission to the Sharks.

Checkout the company website here: Planyt

An automated plant growing system that uses mist-based fertilizer delivery to provide plants with ideal growth conditions was the product showcased on Shark Tank. The founder claimed that the fogponics arrangement was inspired by technology employed in cutting-edge agricultural research, and in conversations about its conceptual underpinnings, he even mentioned NASA. This assertion sparked both curiosity and skepticism.

Planyt’s system aimed to:

• Deliver precise hydration and nutrients through fogponics.
• Automate plant care for urban households; and
• Reduce manual labor and traditional gardening limitations.

Nevertheless, during the presentation, a number of operational and financial issues surfaced despite the intriguing idea.

Here’s a snapshot of Planyt’s key financial and operational figures discussed on Shark Tank India:

Revenue & Sales

Operational since: 2021

Revenue status: Pre-revenue (no confirmed commercial revenue)

Units sold: ~80–100 (beta, discount pricing)

Sales Price & Cost

Approx. consumer cost to adopt system: ₹7.5 lakh per household model

Electricity dependency: High (continuous operation)

Other Funding

Government support: Founder mentioned ~₹10 lakh in government funds (unspecified details).

In Season 5, Episode 4, Shubham Upadhyay, the creator of Planyt, introduced his venture as a deep-tech agri-innovation business that sought to address food scarcity through cutting-edge indoor farming.

He started out by describing how Planyt grows vegetables more quickly, with greater yields, and with less water by using fogponics technology, a type of aeroponics in which plant roots are suspended in the air and nourished with nutrient-rich mist. He said the technology might be used in homes, commercial kitchens, and future space missions because it could grow crops in small urban areas and even in harsh circumstances.

The Ask

Shubham asked for:

₹1.05 crore for 6.5% equity, valuing Planyt at approximately ₹16.15 crore.

The Founder’s Claims

During the pitch, he stated that:

• His technology could grow plants 3–4 times faster than traditional soil farming.
• The system was inspired by research used in NASA’s space farming experiments.
• One family could become almost self-sufficient in vegetables using Planyt’s setup.
• The long-term vision was to combat global hunger through controlled-environment agriculture.

These bold statements immediately caught the Sharks’ attention — and scrutiny.

Sharks’ Questions & Concerns

As the discussion intensified, the Sharks felt the pitch was driven more by vision than execution. Anupam Mittal openly criticized the mismatch between ambition and business reality, pointing out that:

• A pre-revenue startup with high-cost hardware,
• No mass-market affordability,
• And unclear unit economics

could not command a ₹16+ crore valuation.

Other Sharks echoed similar views, stating that while the idea was futuristic, it was commercially unready and strategically unfocused.

One by one, all the Sharks opted out, citing:

• Lack of revenue,
• Weak scalability,
• Overambitious claims,
• And an unrealistic valuation.

Planyt walked away without a deal, but with strong feedback:

Refine the technology, validate the market, reduce costs, and build a clear, sustainable business model before seeking investment.

Planyt’s presence on Shark Tank India served as a reminder that execution, affordability, and market preparedness are just as important as vision. The Sharks’ rejection demonstrated how crucial financial clarity and product feasibility are in real-world investment decisions, even though the goal to rethink plant growth and combat poverty through automation was noteworthy.

Planyt’s Tank journey provides both spectators and startup founders with insightful information about what investors seek: real traction, careful unit economics, and sincere, supported statements that align with the statistics on paper.