Exclusive! Shark Tank India 2: Pharmallama’s Arjun Raghunandan on getting a five shark deal: 'We aspire to touch a billion lives, one sachet at a time'

Sharks Anupam Mittal, Amit Jain, Vineeta Singh, Namita Thapar, Aman Gupta, and Peyush Bansal offered a pitcher an unusual five shark deal in the most recent episode of Shark Tank India 2. The judges were fascinated by the brand brought by Arjun Raghunandan, Achintya Dayal, and Deepesh Rajpal, which featured pre-sorted doctor-prescribed pharmaceutical packs with consumption information. They demanded Rs 1 crore for 1.5% equity. They received a unique five shark offer for their brand Pharmallama.

Excerpts from the interview…

How did you come up with this idea, what was your muse? As we have all faced this problem of having to keep explaining the elderly about their medications again and again, this idea of yours will help us all.

The idea of Pharmallama came to us as it’s a problem that we all have faced in our lives. As mentioned by Achintya, it was very close to him as he had to sought medicines for his mother before we went out for our idea. We always felt the notice of that there would be people in everyone’s house that would want the solution. So we went out and validate this problem with a small focus group and we realise that the problem is bigger than it seems and hence we thought we should go ahead and execute it.

You got a 5 shark deal at the show, which is a rare, how do you feel about it and how do you plan to take this ahead?

It has been very exciting for us. Apart from the investment, it's the validation of each of the sharks that they had in our business. We feel very grateful to the sharks. We want to built this company in a way that we are able to touch billion lives one sachet at a time.

Do you have any other investors lined up as well? 

Apart from the Sharks, we also have a very good inbound interest of other investors wanting to invest money in our company. We have a lot of messages reaching out to us which is a very good thing and also helps us validate the business further.

How have the sharks coming on board made a difference to the business? How are they involved in the business as of the moment? 

Many new people were introduced to our plan due to Shark Tank. Due to which, the sales and the app downloads increased significantly. We got about 10,000 downloads on the night after Shark Tank.

Could you give me a rundown of your team, and how it operates? 

So total team strength is about 30 people and then we have some freelancers also working with us. Out of the 30 people, 8 people are the top management that includes the founders as well, across operations, technology, finance and strategy. Then we have around 10 pharmacist as a part of the operations team that helps us in fulfiling the orders. Remaining 12 people are spread across the call centre, the logistics team and the packaging.

Meanwhile, Anupam Mittal made a 1.22 crore rupee bid for 2.22 percent shares. Peyush Bansal told Anupam to come with four of them and offered Rs 2 crore for 5 per cent from all 5 sharks. Deepesh was not persuaded, so they requested Rs 2 crore for 4%. Aman Gupta and Namita Thapar informed them that their most recent deal with five sharks was extraordinary. Finally, the co-founders accepted the offer.