Ubreathe

Sanjay Maurya did his Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kanpur and MBA from FMS Delhi. In between his studies, he was the founding team member of Autoninja for 3 years. Shubham Singh is an IIT Ropar alumni, where the startup is incubated. Sanjay Maurya is Season 2's most dual-elite-institution-qualified biotechnology entrepreneur an IIT Kanpur engineer and FMS Delhi MBA who spent time in startup founding before identifying indoor air pollution as the most urgent and most commercially underserved health technology opportunity in India. UBreathe's research is backed by premier institutes such as IIT Ropar, CIIE.CO IIM Ahmedabad, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), and the Nexus US Embassy Delhi. The company has filed 6 patents in India and Europe.

UBreathe's unique purifiers combine the natural air purifying capabilities of plants with modern technology. Their proprietary design boosts a plant's natural process of removing pollutants from the air with improved soil breathability. Unlike mechanical purifiers that filter only dust pollution and are highly toxic to the environment, their solution captures all the contaminants in the air. The product is tested and certified by NABL Labs and has been reviewed and recommended by faculty of AIIMS Delhi. Ubreathe is India's most scientifically validated plant-based air purifier — using their proprietary Breathing Roots Technology (BRT) to amplify a plant's natural air purification capability 100 times through enhanced soil breathability and air circulation engineering, combined with HEPA and other filtration layers that capture particulate matter, viruses, bacteria, gases, and VOCs that conventional mechanical purifiers cannot fully address.

Amount Asked: ₹1.5 crore Equity Offered: 7.5% Implied Pre-Money Valuation: ₹20 crore

The 30-year-old founder, Sanjay Maurya, and 28-year-old Head of Product, Shubham Singh, began by indicating their age as 45 and 50, referencing how high air pollution levels in Indian cities are aging our lungs faster. A recent study indicates that an average person in Delhi loses 10 years of life due to air pollution. Sanjay and Shubham opened Season 2 Episode 32 with Season 2's most dramatically personal health-risk pitch entry claiming to be 45 and 50 years old at the start of the pitch, then revealing they were actually 30 and 28, communicating the specific health consequence of air pollution (premature biological aging of the lungs) in a single visceral moment that made the data immediately personal. The team further explained how the existing air purifiers not just fail to address the indoor air quality problem holistically but also have a negative environmental impact.

Anupam Mittal exited on strategic clarity grounds the founders had not sufficiently communicated the "big picture" vision for how Ubreathe would scale from 1,000 customers to a commercially significant air purification company. Vineeta Singh exited on two connected concerns lower product efficacy compared to established HEPA purifiers (at the product level) and insufficient gross margin (30%) to build a profitable consumer electronics brand at scale. Aman Gupta and Peyush Bansal exited on commercialisation stage and margin concerns a -50% EBITDA company with ₹47 lakh annual revenue was too early for the capital deployment model they typically preferred. Amit Jain exited on domain expertise grounds air purification biotechnology sits entirely outside automotive marketplace expertise. Namita Thapar was the most comprehensively aligned Shark her Emcure Pharmaceuticals background made her uniquely equipped to evaluate biotechnology product claims, institutional endorsements (IIT, IIM, AIIMS, BIRAC), and the clinical relevance of indoor air quality for pharmaceutical workers, patients, and healthcare settings.

The founders originally asked for ₹1.5 crore for 7.5% equity (₹20 crore valuation). The negotiations involved Namita working through the commercial structure: Namita Thapar invested in Ubreathe on Shark Tank India with ₹50 Lakhs for 5% Equity and an additional ₹1 Crore in Debt at 10% Interest. The original ask was ₹1.5 crores for 7.5% equity, which was finally agreed to at ₹50 lakhs for 5% equity and ₹1 crore debt at 10% interest. The total capital (₹1.5 crore) matched the founders' original ask. The structure changed: instead of all equity (7.5%), the deal was restructured to 5% equity plus ₹1 crore debt — giving Namita downside protection through the debt repayment obligation while giving the founders more equity retention than the pure-equity structure would have provided.

Sanjay Maurya, Akhil Gupta, Akshay Goyal, and Inderjeet Rao accepted Namita Thapar's deal of ₹50 lakhs for 5% equity plus ₹1 crore debt at 10% interest valuing Ubreathe at ₹10 crore and providing the same total capital as originally requested (₹1.5 crore). The debt-equity split structure protected Namita's commercial interest while preserving more equity for the founders than the original 7.5% pure-equity ask. The deal was confirmed and formally closed after the episode aired.

Ubreathe continues operating website active, Amazon listings current, and the institutional partnership ecosystem growing. The Shark Tank national broadcast gave Ubreathe consumer awareness that its existing institutional backers (IITs, IIM, government agencies) could not have generated at mass scale. The company's stated vision to make Ubreathe an R&D and innovation powerhouse and resolve a worldwide problem of air pollution positions the brand as a technology platform rather than a single product company. The ₹335 billion global indoor air quality market (cited during the pitch) represents an enormous commercial opportunity for a company that has already demonstrated technical credibility at the highest institutional levels.