In a dramatic twist to the recent season of Shark Tank India, the AI-based fintech product SaveSage was able to secure one of the major deals of the season, only to be met by a tsunami of online criticism. As the founder mentioned, Ashish Lath managed to persuade a panel of four Sharks to invest ₹4 crore. The television win was soon to be followed by the flood of one-star ratings in App stores immediately after the episode was over.
Pitch and ₹4 crore deal
The pitch for SaveSage stood out for its audacity and personal storytelling. Founder, The SaveSage pitch was memorable due to its audacity and personalisation of the journey. Founder Ashish Lath, a former Executive Assistant to Shark Kunal Bahl, offered a platform that is meant to enable users to maximise credit card rewards. To illustrate the possibility of his total system solution of plastic money, Lath exposed that in the last decade, he and his wife had not paid a dime on flights.
The couple used credit card data to book 430 flights (350 domestic and 80 international), 100 hotel stays and even bought 15 lakh worth of jewellery using the reward points. He also stated that he had a 23% value of his total expenditures in the past two years. These figures shocked the judges, and Anupam Mittal at first rejected it as a new gimmick (naya totka) and then turned into one of the major investors.
The Tank valuation game was fierce. The first offer was 1% equity by Ashish Lath at ₹1 crore; the company was estimated to be worth ₹100 crore. Although Aman Gupta chose not to do so, with the excuse of being able to find such information on the social media reel, the rest of the sharks found more merit in the AI-based platform, which analyses the spending behaviour to propose the most appropriate card to use with each and every transaction.
Anupam Mittal, Kunal Bahl, Mohit Yadav and Namita Thapar made a joint offer after a series of negotiations. The entrepreneurs finally settled on ₹4 crore to purchase 9% of equity in the company, raising the valuation of the company to about ₹44.44 crore. The Sharks acclaimed the stability of the application and the power of its selling idea in a nation where the number of credit cards is more than 11 crore.
star review backlash
The effect of the Shark Tank was a two-edged sword for SaveSage. Soon after the episode was aired, the app received negative reviews and one-star ratings on both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.
The main user complaint was the paywall and subscription to the application. Curiosity among many viewers compelled them to download the application out of curiosity over the promise of free travel, only to realise that most of the features were accessible only to those who paid a premium price.
Reviewers have alleged that the startup is misleading, some referring to it as a paid credit card search engine. It is this backlash that underscores a difference between an effective pitch to an investor and the user experience of a mass television viewer.
Conclusion
The SaveSage experience can be regarded as a warning to startups that make a splash in reality TV. Although Ashish Lath was able to raise a staggering ₹4 crore investment, as well as the support of some of the most influential business owners in India, the backlash of the one-star review in the near future highlights the issue of taking a high-end service to the masses.
The company now has the challenging opportunity of reconciling its high-valuation growth strategy with the fact of user feedback, as it seeks to convert those one-star ratings into the “solid model that the Sharks had believed in.
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