Urban Monkey

Yash Gangwal is Season 1's most culturally immersed and most authentically community-rooted founder — a Hong Kong-raised skateboarder who moved to India alone at 24, joined Mumbai's skateboarding Facebook group because he had no friends, discovered through that community that India had no authentic streetwear brand serving skaters, hip-hop artists, and underground culture enthusiasts, started selling caps because there was nothing suitable available, built a bootstrapped brand that earned collaborations with Rannvijay Singha, Raftaar, Divine, Bhuvan Bam, and Gully Gang without any paid influencer contracts, and walked into Shark Tank India with a ₹100 crore valuation and a refusal to compromise his brand vision — not out of stubbornness but out of the genuine understanding that Urban Monkey's value is the culture it serves. Yash was born and brought up in Hong Kong and came back to India 8 years ago, alone. Yash loves to skate and he has been doing it since he was 12 years old.

Urban Monkey is India's original and largest streetwear and headwear brand — building a D2C fashion label rooted in India's hip-hop, skateboarding, and underground artist community, offering caps, eyewear, apparel, accessories, and lifestyle products through its own website exclusively, cultivating authentic cultural partnerships with India's leading underground artists, and positioning itself as the Indian answer to international streetwear culture brands like Supreme, HUF, and Palace.

Amount Asked: ₹1 crore Equity Offered: 1% Implied Pre-Money Valuation: ₹100 crore

Urban Monkey's pitch was the second of Episode 23 — arriving after Namhya's Ayurvedic wellness earnestness with something entirely different: a brand built on hip-hop, skateboarding, and underground culture, pitched by a founder who was himself the embodiment of the community he served. During the pitch, Yash got a bit nervous and took a minute and started his pitch again. BizzBucket The restart — acknowledging nervousness and composing himself on live national television — was a pitch moment that likely endeared Yash to the audience more than any polished delivery could have. It was authentic, which is exactly what the brand is. The "Drip is Drip" exchange with Aman was the pitch's most viral moment — and the one that most precisely communicated what Urban Monkey is. A brand whose core product is cultural authenticity cannot be explained to someone outside the culture without losing the authenticity in the translation.

Anupam Mittal was initially interested but exited when Yash mentioned plans to launch watches next. Anupam goes out, citing that he is expanding into too many products without solving the supply chain problems of existing products. Vineeta Singh exited on inventory and scalability concerns. Vineeta adds that she is not interested in the business because she foresees inventory problems. With that, she exits from negotiations. Peyush Bansal made Season 1's most transformative conditional offer — but with a fundamental strategic disagreement attached. Aman Gupta and Ashneer Grover jointly offered ₹1 crore for 10% equity. Peyush matched.

The condition is Urban Monkey has to limit its SKUs and they can only sell caps and eyewear. They have to drop everything else till the brand becomes a ₹100 crore company. Peyush promised he'd make the revenue of the company ₹100 crores within 3 years. Aman Gupta and Ashneer Grover gave the second offer — ₹1 crore for 10% of the company. Hearing this, Peyush Bansal matched their offer. Yash gave a counter-offer of ₹1 crore for 1.53%. Sharks didn't agree with this valuation. And just like that, no deal happened. The negotiation exposed the fundamental strategic disagreement: the Sharks believed Urban Monkey's value was in its cap and eyewear categories (focus on the winners, drop everything else).

no final deal