The latest episode of Shark Tank India 5 saw a match-off between two stock trading platforms. Despite having founders with an illustrious educational background, the first trading company, Sovrenn, lost out on the deal. During their pitch, Kanika Tekriwal also shared how, coming from a Marwari home, she was often discouraged from gambling or investing in the share market. ‘Sharks’ Aman Gupta, Kunal Bahl, and Anupam Mittal also raised concerns over the brand not integrating AI into their roadmap.
What is Sovrenn?
Sovrenn is a stock discovery, analysis, tracking, and learning platform that also promotes financial literacy. Founded by Akriti Swaroop, Aditya Joshi, and Apoorva Joshi, the company only provides consolidated data, but doesn’t play the advisory role of trading in the stock market. The company was started in 2023 and has more than 1.25 lakh subscribers today. Being fully bootstrapped, the founders came into the tank with an idea to expand. They asked for an investment of Rs 1 crore for 1 percent equity, placing the company’s valuation at Rs 100 crores.
Also Read: Kanika Tekriwal battled cancer at 22, set up Rs 420-cr ‘Uber for skies’, says she came ‘unprepared’ to Shark Tank India
What impressed the Sharks was the illustrious educational background each founder came with. Akriti shared that she did engineering from IIT Khadakpur, MBA from IIM Calcutta, and is a CFA charter holder. Other than this, she worked for 5 years with Deutsche Bank, and Aditya has been her batchmate at IIM. Learning this, Aman Gupta commented, “Aap toh bade padhe likhe ho yaar.”
Aditya also shared that he did engineering from IIT Delhi, MBA from IIM Calcutta, was a silver medalist at IIT Delhi, and a rank holder at IIM, worked with BCG for 6 years, and then joined Lenskart for 1.5 years, reporting to Peyush Bansal, who was the VP there. Reacting to this, Anupam Mittal commented, “Tumhaari gaadi chadti bohot acchi hai, lekin utarti ek dum dhug se, BCG se sidha Lenskart.”
Aditya’s sister Apoorva also revealed she had done B Tech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Delhi. The founder further went on to share that in 2024-25, they earned a net revenue of Rs 3 crore, in 23-24, their earning was Rs 2 crore, and in 25-26, till October, they had generated a revenue of Rs 1.4 crore.
The share split in the company raised an alarm for the Sharks
Two aspects that became a major point of concern for the Sharks were that the company claimed to be manual-driven, and no AI integrations were planned in the roadmap. Mohit Yadav also got disappointed when the founder refused to get into the advisory role for trading, even in the future. Another aspect that didn’t go down well, especially with Anupam, Aman, and Mohit, was the share split between the founders. Aditya revealed he owned 92.99 percent of the company, his sister Apoorva owned 5 percent, and Akriti owned 2 percent.
While Aman and Anupam called this unfair, Akriti defended the share split by pointing out that Sovrenn was Aditya’s brainchild. Sharing his views, Aman said, “This is weird, I don’t agree to the fact that being in equity, you just have 2 percent.” When Aditya says they equally worked hard on the brand, Anupam added, “Then, given her 50 percent.”
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Mohit also asked Akriti if she was happy with what was built. Expressing his concern over no AI integration, Kunal Bahl said, “Kahi hum peeche toh nahi reh gaye, has the AI race overtaken us?”
Sovrenn’s pitch ended with Aditya saying their opponent brand, Multibagg.AI, was not up to the mark, and it usually provided generic answers.
Kanika Tekriwal revisits her fear of trading
While all the Sharks decided to opt out of the deal, giving his verdict, Anupam Mittal said, “Seeing your cohort conversion, I feel somewhere you are lying to yourself; in reality, this is getting converted at a fin-fluencer’s fan following. To me its not an investible business today, I am out. Start embracing AI today, not tomorrow.”
Mohit Yadav said, “I am personally very interested in this space because the penetration will increase. But people need help on the other side, and this information doesn’t serve that purpose, so I am out for now.” Kanika Tekriwal went on share a personal story and said, “The product is amazing, but as a fresh investor, I have never played in the stock market. I am from a Marwari family, so since I was a child, gambling and trading in share markets were discouraged. I gathered a lot of courage and opened a demat account in the last 1-2 months. People will laugh, but that’s the reality. I keep looking for products like these to invest in, but seeing both the pitches, I find the other one simpler. Time is very limited, so I don’t think I will read so much. I don’t see fun in this.”
Kunal Bahl said, “One big problem in this business is that you don’t have truth tellers around you. You guys are amazing equity analysts, but you’ll be left behind in the academic world. Tech product capability has not yet been built out, so I am out.” Aman Gupta also added, “Mereko aap log par taras aa raha hai, this is what AI is doing to a lot of business. Disruption is real.”
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While the founders walked out disappointed, Aditya said, “Only good investors can assess the quality of investing knowledge.”
Shark Tank India 5: Kanika Tekriwal shares a personal experience during Aditya Joshi's Sovrenn pitch. (Photos: SonyLiv/ Screengrab)