GunjanApps Studios

Started in 2016 by husband and wife duo Sourav and Gunjan Gupta, Kolkata-based GunjanApps Studios develops educational games for kids aged between 1.5 to 12 years. The startup claims to have developed over 40 mobile apps that collectively have 200 million downloads. Sourav Gupta is an engineer who worked for 12 years with L and T Infotech and later IBM before quitting his corporate career to co-found GunjanApps. Gunjan Gupta is a certified Android programmer with 3 years of experience as a web and mobile app developer. Both are from Kolkata. The couple was living in the US when they observed how their son, aged 1 at the time, learned numbers by playing with a PoC that Gunjan was working on at the time. That is when the founders had their eureka moment — an app that allows children to learn without parental assistance. Gunjan said she could not find any free app that offered a similar learning experience.

GunjanApps Studios is India's largest educational gaming company for children, building free-to-play, advertisement-supported mobile games covering mathematics, English, puzzles, colours, and physical fitness for children aged 1.5 to 12 years. The studio's philosophy is that meaningful screen time (children learning through interactive gameplay without parental intervention) is better than passive screen time (YouTube or entertainment videos). The flagship product is the math learning game with 60 million downloads and 3 lakh positive reviews making it one of the most downloaded educational apps in India. The free model removes the subscription barrier that other edtech companies impose, making the apps accessible to every economic segment across India.

Amount Asked: ₹2.5 crore Equity Offered: 1% Implied Pre-Money Valuation: ₹250 crore

Sourav and Gunjan walked into Season 2 Episode 7 as India's most profitably self-built educational gaming couple. The pitch opened with a demonstration of the flagship math app showing how a 1.5-year-old child could learn to count independently, without a parent present, through the interactive tap-and-learn interface. Peyush next asked them about their revenue model. Sourav explained three revenue streams and shared the ₹24 crore FY22 revenue and ₹21 crore EBITDA numbers. The profitability metrics left the Sharks visibly impressed 95 percent gross margin and ₹15 crore net profit from free-to-play educational games is a business model most investors would consider extraordinary. The problem surfaced when Peyush asked about the team. Sourav revealed a small team relative to the company's scale. The implication that the founders were extracting ₹15 crore in annual net profit while maintaining a lean team that may have been underpaid

Vineeta Singh was the first and most personally concerned Shark. According to her belief, screen time will not decrease in any way and these apps also become addictive; hence she was out. Namita Thapar shared Vineeta's view with added clinical intensity. Namita believed that an increase in children's screen time is a tragedy, and one should work to reverse this trend, not accept it. Anupam Mittal delivered the sharpest commercial critique. Anupam was not convinced about the competitive strategy of the business. Peyush Bansal exited on team investment grounds. Peyush felt that they were not ready to share their capital with the teams and hence did not find the business investable Aman Gupta had been willing to join Anupam's offer had Anupam made one. Since Anupam exited without offering, Aman exited as well citing no competitive strategy and alignment with Anupam's team-reinvestment concern.

No Shark made a formal offer. All five exited without entering negotiation. The business was genuinely profitable and the pitch financials were strong; the exits were based on concerns about the app addiction model, team underinvestment, competitive strategy fragility, and the revenue concentration risk of ad-only monetisation. The ₹250 crore founder valuation was never tested since no Shark reached the offer stage.

GunjanApps Studios walked out of Shark Tank India Season 2 Episode 7 without any investment. All five Sharks declined to invest despite the company's extraordinary profitability (₹15 crore net profit, 95 percent gross margins, 200 million plus downloads). The rejections came from a combination of screen-time and addiction concerns (Vineeta, Namita), competitive strategy weakness and team underinvestment concerns (Anupam, Peyush), and Aman's deference to Anupam's exit.