Experiential Etc

Karan Bhardwaj (Co-founder & CEO) handles finance and sales — the commercial engine of the partnership. Karan has been looking at finance and sales. All the business strategic decisions of the company are taken by Karan. His marketing expertise and sales relationships enabled the agency to break into India's most demanding marketing clients (HUL, ITC, Britannia) and subsequently attract major agency relationships (GroupM, Dentsu, Webchutney). Prashant Pandey (Co-founder & COO) comes from a real estate background and manages execution — the operational spine of the partnership. Prashant comes from a real estate background and he is the execution specialist so he is the backbone of the company. The real estate background gives Prashant the project management and vendor coordination skills that large-scale physical marketing installations require.

Experiential Etc is a Mumbai-based technology-led experiential marketing agency — creating branded experiences for major corporations through proprietary technologies including Holobyk (a holographic display system for brand activations and product launches), Live Glass (transparent LED display technology creating immersive visual experiences), augmented reality experiences, event exhibitions, interactive games, and retail display innovations — differentiating from conventional advertising agencies by making physical, technology-enhanced brand experiences rather than creating content for digital or print media.

Amount Asked: ₹2 crore Equity Offered: 4% Implied Pre-Money Valuation: ₹50 crore

Thea and Sid's romantic proposal ring no-deal with something technologically sophisticated: holographic displays, Live Glass installations, and AR experiences for India's biggest corporations. Their technology-led advertising campaigns impressed the Sharks visually. Peyush commented that the founders have phenomenal ideas and they would get lots of orders after their episode would air. The pitch demonstrated the Holobyk technology and Live Glass installations — giving the Sharks a visceral sense of what experiential marketing technology can create for a brand. The creative quality of the campaigns (Disney's brand activations, Honda product launches) was evident and impressive. The 20-year friendship founding story — two Mumbaikars who had known each other since childhood and built an agency together — communicated founding team cohesion that most agency pitches cannot demonstrate.

Ashneer Grover exited on category grounds. Ashneer goes out citing that it's a service, not a brand, therefore he went out. The service-not-brand critique is a fundamental investor category concern: service businesses (agencies, consultancies, professional service firms) scale with headcount rather than with capital deployment — making the investor return profile different from product companies. Aman Gupta agreed with Ashneer. Aman agreed with Ashneer therefore he went out as well. Anupam Mittal exited on investability grounds. Anupam added that it's not an investable business therefore he went out as well. Namita Thapar exited specifically on client concentration risk. Namita went out due to dependence on one client for the majority of their revenue. Peyush Bansal was the most constructively engaged Shark — acknowledging the creative quality, identifying the tech scale potential, and making the only offer.

Offer: ₹2 crore for 33.33% equity. Counter Offer: ₹2 crore for 10% equity. Peyush declined 10%, the founders declined 33.33%, and the company went out of the Tank without a deal.

no final deal