Design Template

Dadasaheb Pandurang Bhagat is Season 3's most dramatically self-transformed founder. His journey from the drought-prone Beed district of Maharashtra to a ₹10 crore company is one of Indian entrepreneurship's most inspiring personal narratives. He studied only till 10th grade, completed an ITI course, worked as a factory worker earning ₹80 per day, then moved to Pune for better prospects and earned ₹4,000 monthly at a factory job. His pivotal moment came when he joined Infosys as an office boy. Watching employees work on laptops, earning lakhs monthly with their skills, planted a seed: he began learning design at night after sweeping floors during the day. He enrolled in a Diploma in Multimedia while juggling his office boy job.

DesignTemplate is India's largest online design marketplace, providing premium motion graphics templates, video editing templates (After Effects, Premiere Pro), illustrations, and royalty-free music that enable designers and businesses to create professional-quality content in a fraction of the time that manual creation requires. The platform serves a specific workflow need: when designers create motion graphics, animated invitations, corporate presentations, or video intros, they spend hours building effects, transitions, and animations from scratch. DesignTemplate provides pre-built, professionally crafted templates that designers customise with their own content, reducing production time from days to hours while maintaining premium quality.

Amount Asked: ₹1 crore Equity Offered: 2.5% Implied Pre-Money Valuation: ₹40 crore

Dadasaheb walked into Season 3 Episode 36 as the most visibly nervous founder of the episode, which made his eventual deal closure even more compelling. He opened by sharing his extraordinary personal journey: from village painter's apprentice to factory worker to Infosys office boy to self-taught designer to VFX artist on Hollywood productions to design marketplace founder. His pitch framing drew a parallel to Indian cinema's pioneer: "Dadasaheb Phalke was the pioneer of Indian cinema. Similarly, I, Dadasaheb Bhagat, seek your help to build a whole new world of design." The comparison was audacious but contextually fitting: both Dadasahebs sought to democratise a creative medium for Indian audiences.

Vineeta Singh was the first to exit, citing concerns that new skills would be required to scale the business further, and she was not yet confident the founder possessed those skills at the current stage. Peyush Bansal made an offer with conditions: ₹1 crore investment but funds must not go toward marketing and instead be used for new design development, team building, and technology. His offer was ultimately superseded by Aman's unconditional deal. Radhika Gupta (guest Shark) was deeply inspired by the founder's story and praised his journey publicly. She did not make a competing offer but her emotional endorsement validated the founder on national television. Anupam Mittal and Ritesh Agarwal did not make competing offers. The design marketplace category sat outside their primary domain expertise. Aman Gupta was impressed by the founder's strategy and vision for building India's design ecosystem. He offered ₹1 crore for 10% equity (₹10 crore valuation), and the founder accepted.

Dadasaheb asked ₹1 crore for 2.5% equity (₹40 crore valuation). Peyush offered ₹1 crore with conditions (no marketing spend, focus on design development and technology). Aman offered ₹1 crore for 10% equity (₹10 crore valuation) without conditions. The founder accepted Aman's unconditional offer, taking a 75% valuation markdown (₹40 crore to ₹10 crore) and 4x higher equity dilution (2.5% to 10%) in exchange for boAt's consumer brand scaling expertise and Aman's unconditional investment support.

Dadasaheb Pandurang Bhagat accepted Aman Gupta's offer of ₹1 crore for 10% equity at ₹10 crore valuation. The deal was confirmed and closed after the show. Aman's boAt consumer brand building expertise, digital marketing methodology, and D2C scaling infrastructure provided the specific capabilities that a design marketplace founder with a VFX background needed most: how to market, distribute, and scale a digital consumer product nationally.

Our research in the DesignTemplate revealed that their deal with Aman Gupta was finalized and closed after the show. The company is still in business as of May 2024. The platform has witnessed remarkable growth, with a 100X increase in traffic and a 20% surge in sales after Bhagat's appearance on Shark Tank India. DesignTemplate continues growing post-Shark Tank. The 100x traffic increase and 20% sales surge demonstrate the most dramatic Shark Tank visibility effect of Episode 36. The DooGraphics website has been redirected to DesignTemplate, consolidating both the template marketplace and the drag-and-drop design tool under one platform, creating India's most comprehensive design ecosystem. Dadasaheb acknowledged post-show: "After appearing on Shark Tank, we realized that our business was still in its initial stage and would require many changes. We needed a team to handle scalability and expertise in marketing, distribution, and cost management." This honest self-assessment demonstrates the specific growth mindset that converts Shark feedback into operational improvement.