Muaaz Qadri

Recode Studios is a beauty brand started by two men, Dheeraj Bansal and Rahul Sachdeva, who pitched their company in the first episode of Season 2 of Shark Tank India. While the Sharks were impressed with the business, none of them ended up investing due to one reason or the other.  In this piece, I will walk you through what exactly is Recode Studios, the Recode Studios Shark Tank Pitch and share updates on what happened with Recode Studios after their Shark Tank Appearance.  What is Recode Studios? The core insight behind Recode Studios is simple — makeup is everywhere but it...

In Episode 12 of Shark Tank’s Season 12, Keidy & Gene Palusky, a couple, pitched their company Xtorch. What happened after the pitch was unpredictable. While four sharks refused to invest in the company, Robert offered to buy the entire company.  In this piece, I will run you through everything there is to know about ‘Xtorch’ — what exactly is ‘Xtorch’, ‘Xtorch’s Shark Tank pitch & deal, and what happened to Xtorch after Shark Tank. What is Xtorch? Founded by Keidy and Gene, Xtorch is basically a multi-purpose solar torch light. Not only does it work as a solar charging torch light,...

In Episode 8 of Shark Tank’s Season 2, Jeff Stroope, a firefighter, pitched his company ‘Hyconn.’ What happened after he gave the pitch was unbelievable. While Jeff was seeking $500k in exchange for 40% of his company, Mark offered to buy Hyconn at a price of $1.25 million, a three year employment contract for a yearly salary of $100k and 7.5% royalty fee for perpetuity.  In this piece, I will run you through everything there is to know about ‘Hyconn’ — what exactly ‘Hyconn’ did, ‘Hyconn’s Shark Tank pitch & deal, and ‘Hyconn’s update after Shark Tank. What is Hyconn? Jeff, the...

Jhaji Pickle, a Bihar based pickle brand started by two women in their fifties, pitched their product in Episode 4 of the first season of Shark Tank India. While the brand did not get funding from any of the sharks, it ended up getting funding from Velocity, a revenue-based financing startup focussed on helping ecommerce brands grow.  In the piece, I will walk you through what is the vision of Jhaji Pickle, the Jhaji Pickle shark tank pitch and also share updates about what is going on with Jhaji Pickle post the Shark Tank Appearance.  Vision of Jhaji Pickle: Hailing from a...

The Shark Tank CocoFit pitch was a unique one in the sense that the founders were looking less for money and more for the expertise of the Sharks to help grow their brand. The response that the pitch got from Sharks was also unique in the sense that two of them were very upfront in rejecting the offer and three of them were willing to get onboard with the founders.  In the piece, I will walk you through what is the vision of cocofit, the cocofit shark tank pitch and also share updates about what is going on with CocoFit...

In April 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram for a then-unprecedented $1billion. At the time of the acquisition, Instagram was growing fast, but it had only 25 million registered users — minuscule compared to Facebook's hundreds of million users. To top it off, Instagram was not bringing in any revenue; it was being run by 13 employees and was only two years old. Before Facebook closed the deal, even Twitter tried its hand at courting Instagram. But Instagram's founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, decided to go ahead with Facebook because other than the massive sum of money, Mark Zukurberg dangled the carrot of independence. If...

McDonald's is ubiquitous. No matter which country or major city you go to, you are bound to find a McDonald's outlet. As of 2020, the company was operating 40,031 outlets worldwide and held the title of 'The World's Largest Restaurant Company'. But what if, I told you, McDonald's is a real estate empire hiding under the guise of a fast-food chain?  In its 2021 Financial Report, the company reported 41.9 billion dollars worth of assets in property & equipment before accounting for depreciation, making it the 6th largest public real estate company in the world even if we were to deduct the...

In the early days of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman did something he advises all startup founders to do; he went around and discussed the idea of LinkedIn with all the smart people in his network. But when he shared the idea of LinkedIn in his network, 2/3 or more thought Reid was nuts.  And to be clear, Reid’s network included some of the most influential people in Silicon Valley at the time because before starting LinkedIn; Reid was the executive vice president of Paypal, meaning he was a member of what is popularly known as the Paypal mafia. Most of Reid’s smart friends...

In November 2006, almost two years after its founding in February 2005, Google acquired YouTube for a then-hefty price of $1.65 billion.  In the 2021 annual report, Google reported that YouTube generated $28.8 billion from advertisements alone in 2021 (Youtube generates revenue through other income streams as well, which we will discuss below), contributing 11.19% to Google’s total 2021 revenue.  Youtube has, undoubtedly, been one of the most remarkable acquisitions in the history of tech. It is the second most popular website in the world after Google. Source: Similar Web  But when it comes to engagement metrics like avg visit duration, pages per visit...

12 years since being founded in 2009, Grammarly has more than 30 Million daily active users, over 10 Million downloads of its chrome extension, and 50,000+ professional and enterprise clients. And all this for a company that did not raise its first round of funding worth $110 Million until its eighth year of operation. Now, I'm not by any means trying to imply that Grammarly was bootstrapped for the initial 8 years of the startup’s journey — the founders did make some money from selling their first startup (nobody knows how much but more on that later), which was used to self-fund the...