The Simply Salad

Payal Pathak said she worked with British Airways as a reservation counter officer. She later started a PG (Paying Guest) business in Ahmedabad, which was doing well. However, after Covid-19, their business stopped, and they realized a potential demand for healthy food. Henceforth, they started their business of Simply Salad. Soham Payal Pathak is Payal's son and was just 19 years old at the time of the pitch, running the business alongside pursuing a BBA Hons in Finance Economics at Ahmedabad University. The Sharks were particularly charmed by the fact that Soham uses his mother's name as his middle name a detail Aman and Vineeta found endearing.

The Simply Salad is a cloud kitchen based in Ahmedabad delivering fresh, healthy, and creative salads to customers' doorsteps through weekly and monthly subscription plans. The company's mission is to transform the perception of salads in India from an unpalatable diet food to a genuinely delicious, filling, and culturally familiar meal. The product's most important commercial innovation is the Indian-flavour adaptation: rather than serving European or American-style salads with dressings unfamiliar to Indian palates, Payal's recipes incorporate Indian-friendly ingredients, spices, and flavour profiles that make the salads feel like a satisfying meal rather than a reluctant health compromise. The salads contain proteins, vitamins, fibre, low fats, and low carbohydrates.

Amount Asked: ₹30 lakhs Equity Offered: 10% Implied Pre-Money Valuation: ₹3 crore

Soham and Payal walked into Season 2 Episode 7 as the episode's most endearing mother-son duo. The pitch opened with Payal's post-COVID founding story, which communicated resilience without self-pity. The transition from British Airways to PG business to salad cloud kitchen was not presented as failure followed by recovery but as one continuous journey of adaptation. The product sampling was the pitch's most commercially decisive moment. Aman Gupta famously hates salads and initially refused to taste it. Soham gently persuaded him. After tasting, Aman was genuinely impressed. Vineeta, watching Aman's reaction, concurred with Soham that Payal was a magician who could make healthy food taste genuinely good.

Anupam Mittal was the most strategically forward-looking Shark. He was impressed with the pricing, the profitability, and the founders' clarity of purpose. Namita Thapar exited due to the high ask relative to her assessment of the valuation and her overall portfolio fit with food subscription businesses. She stepped out despite appreciating the founders' story. Peyush Bansal was impressed by the subscription model's success and the profitability. He stepped out after Aman and Vineeta made their offer Aman Gupta surprised everyone by being the first to formally offer after his initial reluctance to even taste the salad. Vineeta Singh co-invested with Aman, praising the mother-son duo's "grit plus gratitude" combination.

Aman made an offer of ₹30 lakhs for 10% equity, matching the founders' exact original ask. Vineeta joined his offer immediately. The deal was therefore concluded at the founders' original terms without any negotiation. No counter-offer was required because the Shark offer was identical to what the founders had requested.

Payal Pathak and Soham Payal Pathak accepted Aman Gupta and Vineeta Singh's joint offer of ₹30 lakhs for 10% equity, valuing The Simply Salad at ₹3 crore. This was the founders' original ask, met exactly without compromise or negotiation. The deal was confirmed and formally closed after the episode aired. The Simply Salad received the investment it sought at the terms it had specified, from two Sharks whose D2C consumer brand expertise was directly applicable to scaling a food subscription brand.