Adil Qadri

Adil's struggle with asthma forced him to leave school after the 5th grade. From 2005 to 2012, he pursued various courses to expand his knowledge. In 2014, his uncle introduced him to SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), sparking his interest in digital marketing. His father worked at an attar shop for over three decades. Inspired by this, Adil launched the Adil Qadri brand in 2019. He credits his hometown for imparting crucial lessons in business acumen, fragrance identification, and resilience. Nothing was scaleable. I experienced failure multiple times until 2018 when I started a Muslim fashion store by the name of Adil Qadri. But even that didn't work. I decided to experiment with attar. I wanted to make attar cool and relatable to youngsters like me.

Adil Qadri makes modern, premium-packaged, alcohol-free attars and perfumes designed to make traditional Indian fragrance culture appealing to the younger, urban, primarily male consumer — combining the longevity advantage of oil-based attar (which can last 6–8 hours versus 2–3 hours for alcohol-based sprays) with contemporary packaging, accessible pricing, and digital-first D2C distribution. Usually attar comes in traditional fragrances like oud, sandalwood, and rose. This is used only by older people. I wanted to make attar cool and relatable to youngsters. At first, he started selling other brand's attar but soon started making his own.

Amount Asked: ₹1 crore Equity Offered: 0.5% Implied Pre-Money Valuation: ₹200 crore

Adil walked onto the Season 3 premiere stage in his mid-20s from a Tier-3 Gujarat town with a single English phrase — reportedly greeting the Sharks confidently despite limited formal education — and immediately captured the room with his raw authenticity. His famous declaration of being the "gunda" (tough guy/kingpin) of the attar market went viral on social media within hours, generating thousands of posts praising his confidence and grit from a Class 5 dropout. The pitch structure was simple and powerful: Adil told his story (asthma, hospital, school dropout, father's attar shop, SEO, failures, pivot, 20 orders to lakhs), demonstrated his products (Sharks smelled the attars — long-lasting, premium quality, distinctly Indian), and revealed the financials (strong revenue growth, good gross margins, but heavy marketing-driven losses and NBFC debt).

Anupam was the first Shark to go out of the negotiations due to heavy debt and the unconventional margin structure. Aman goes out citing concerns with margins and lack of defensibility from mainstream brands. Namita couldn't relate to the product; therefore, she went out. Amit felt like this was a performance marketing company but not a brand or product company. Vineeta was the only shark left who was interested in the company. She added that her offer would come with a condition that the company would need to stop burning money and bring the profits to at least 1%. She also commented that she is betting on the founder, and she can help Adil come out of this debt trap.

Adil asked for ₹1 crore for 0.5% equity (₹200 crore implied valuation). After four Sharks exited citing debt and scalability concerns, Vineeta made the only offer: ₹1 crore for 1% equity plus 1% net revenue royalty until ₹1 crore is recouped — conditional on the company achieving at least 1% net profitability. Adil accepted without hesitation.

Adil Qadri accepted Vineeta Singh's solo offer of ₹1 crore for 1% equity plus a 1% net revenue royalty until her ₹1 crore investment is fully recouped — at an implied company valuation of ₹100 crore. The deal came with the explicit condition that Adil must stop burning cash and achieve at least 1% net profit margin. This was Season 3's most personally mentorship-driven investment — Vineeta explicitly stated she was "betting on the founder" and committed to helping him escape the NBFC debt trap.