Funngro

Anik, who is the CEO and co-founder of another company called Symbo Insurance, graduated from IIM Calcutta. Payal, also an alumnus of IIM Calcutta, previously held the position of Customer Success Director at Worldline Global. Payal Jain and Anik Jain are Season 2's most IIM-credentialled family founding team both graduates of IIM Calcutta, one of India's top three business schools, with corporate backgrounds in insurance and global payments technology respectively. Their daughter Vea Jain a teenager herself is the platform's most powerful product authenticity signal: the founders built Funngro for the exact demographic they were parenting, and their daughter's co-founder status communicated that the product had been tested by its own target user within the founding family.

Funngro is India's first teenage freelancing marketplace a platform where companies post age-appropriate, skill-matched projects (content creation, social media management, graphic design, research, app testing) and teenagers aged 14 to 20 apply, complete work, and receive payment directly through the Funngro debit card. The three-sided market Funngro creates: Teenagers gain real work experience, verifiable portfolio credits, financial literacy, and their first earned income Companies access enthusiastic, tech-native, social-media-fluent young talent at competitive project rates Funngro earns commission on successful project placements

Amount Asked: ₹50 lakhs Equity Offered: 1.25% Implied Pre-Money Valuation: ₹40 crore

The pitch opened with the teenage opportunity gap millions of Indian teenagers with time, curiosity, digital skills, and motivation to earn, and no organised platform that connected them to companies willing to pay for their work. The freelancing model (project-based work rather than employment) made the platform age-appropriate, legally navigable, and flexible around school schedules. The Funngro card demonstration showing how teenagers received their project earnings on a dedicated debit card was the pitch's most tangible product feature. For many Indian teenagers, the Funngro card would be their first financial instrument in their own name, creating a financial literacy foundation alongside the skill-building and earning opportunity.

Anupam Mittal exited on valuation grounds with the most commercially precise challenge. Anupam goes out commenting that he couldn't make sense of how a pre-revenue company could have a valuation of ₹40 crores. Peyush Bansal exited on strategic focus grounds. Peyush believed that this is a hardcore tech business but because that was not the major focus of the founder, he goes out of the negotiations. Aman Gupta exited on ethical grounds. Aman didn't connect with the cause ethically therefore he goes out. Namita Thapar disagreed with Aman's ethical assessment and remained interested. Namita disagreed with Aman and was interested in the company and investment. Amit Jain shared Namita's positive assessment and co-invested. Amit shared the same sentiment and they both came together for an offer.

Amit and Namita both came together for an offer of ₹25 lakh for 10% and the rest as debt. Founders mentioned that they raised their last round at ₹20 crores therefore they wouldn't be able to proceed with this offer. Following this, the Sharks revised their offer to ₹12 crore valuation which comes to 4.16% for ₹50 lakhs. Founders accepted that offer without any hesitation.

Payal Jain, Anik Jain, and Vea Jain accepted Namita Thapar and Amit Jain's joint offer of ₹50 lakhs for 4.16% equity at ₹12 crore valuation. The founders' anchor to their previous ₹20 crore round valuation successfully improved the offer from the initial equity-plus-debt structure at a much lower valuation to a cleaner all-equity deal. SucSeed Indovation Fund also participated in the round alongside the two Sharks.

Teen freelancing startup Funngro raises funding from Shark Tank judges Amit Jain, Namita Thapar. Funngro, which offers teenagers an opportunity to earn money through real-life freelancing projects, was first incubated at India's first fintech incubator Afthonia Lab in 2021 and has a network of four lakh teenlancers (teenagers who are freelancers) and over 1,000 companies. The growth from 40,000 users at pitch to 4 lakh teenlancers post-Shark Tank a 10x user growth and from 170 companies to 1,000 plus company partners represents one of Season 2's most dramatic marketplace scale-up stories. The Shark Tank national visibility drove both sides of the marketplace simultaneously: teenagers who saw the episode joined as teenlancers, and companies who watched became interested in accessing the platform's teenage talent pool.