After Shark Tank India debacle, Gaurav Taneja opens up about his entrepreneurial journey: ‘You cannot do everything by yourself’

Talking about his journey as an entrepreneur, Gaurav said, “Recently, I was talking to somebody and we discussed how my brand, which was launched in May 2024, made sales worth Rs 1 crore in just one hour. But a lot of hard work went into it for 7-8 years. Right from working out in the gym to gaining knowledge about the products – in India there was a culture that when you went to a gym trainer, he wouldn’t tell you the science behind what to eat and when, what to do, and how to do it. When I started showing all this to people, I was accused of sabotaging gym trainers’ jobs. I was also thrown out of a gym because of this once.”

 

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“When I started content creation, I was also flying that time, so I was juggling between these two things all by myself. I did content creation with zero team, and later met a few good people. Great entrepreneurs have a great team, I understood this very late. I realized that you cannot do everything by yourself, if you do, you will stagnate. I was very underconfident as a child, but this social media journey changed me,” he added.

On the episode, Anupam Mittal had told Gaurav, “When I started, I was a lot like you. I thought of myself as a star, but when you think of yourself as a star, you think you’re infallible. you cant allocate time in startups, you have to be there all the time… It’s not that I don’t trust you, but I trust in Indian entrepreneurship, and they have so much energy, so much passion, they won’t let a part-timer like you win. That’s the reason I’m out.”

At this same event, Gaurav also said that he didn’t learn much on Shark Tank India while he praised his fellow panelist Azhar Iqubal who is a judge on the show. Gaurav joked that generally, he learns from every experience in life. “But wahan jaake kuch nahi seekha,” he said, as the crowd laughed. On the show, Gaurav and his co-founder asked the ‘sharks’ for Rs 1 crore in exchange of 1% equity, valuing their company at Rs 100 crore.