When Flying Beast (Gaurav Taneja) entered the Shark Tank India stage to pitch BeastLife, he expected questions about valuation, revenue, customer retention, CAC, repeat orders, and supply chain.
Instead, what he got was something else entirely.
The Sharks spent more time questioning his YouTube career, his creator identity, his lifestyle, and his personal choices than the actual fundamentals of his company. And that raises a serious question:
Is this the standard we expect from the country’s top investors?
Why was his creator identity treated like a liability?
Influence is a business asset today.
Audience = distribution.
Distribution = free marketing.
Flying Beast has what most startups dream of: a loyal, massive, fast-converting audience. That should have been seen as a strength, not as a problem. Instead, the Sharks grilled him about “quitting YouTube” and doubted his seriousness simply because he is a creator.
But ask yourself:
Would they ask a full-time cricketer to quit cricket before launching a brand?
Would they ask an actor to stop films before scaling a business?
Then why does a creator get treated differently?
Why was he questioned personally instead of professionally?
A pitch meeting is meant to analyse numbers, product, vision, and scalability. But instead of discussing his supplement line, manufacturing, margins, or growth strategy, the Sharks chose to take jabs at:
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his content career
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his personal earnings
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his YouTube growth
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his social media presence
None of this had anything to do with BeastLife’s business model.
And more importantly, none of these questions are asked when other celebrity founders like "Nish Hair" come on the show.
He admitted that he was left speechless by the Sharks' furious reactions and said, “A lot of things happened at Shark Tank and I was wondering why are they so much against me. When I receive a customer’s complaint, I give my team the order number and ask for an update, I won’t sit and see in the system. Obviously I will delegate the task.”
He also addressed the criticism over juggling his social media brand, Flying Beast, with his other ventures. He said, “They told me, ‘You aren’t shutting down Flying Beast?’ and I was like what a foolish decision. They are asking me shut down what distinguishes me and from where I am selling everything.”
He added, “We got a kickstart and we had an advantage but the rest of the journey has been same as them. We didn’t get everything on a plate, I have also had sleepless nights and built this distribution. I would get up at 4 am and take flights.”
Creators deserve respect as entrepreneurs
If anything, Flying Beast has already proven his entrepreneurial discipline:
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He built one of India’s most engaged YouTube communities
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He created demand before creating the product
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His brand sold out within hours
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He built a company without relying on VC money
Creators today don’t just make videos. They build businesses, ecosystems, and communities.
The Sharks’ approach felt outdated:
as if being a creator disqualifies you from being a serious entrepreneur.
The Sharks missed the real questions
Instead of asking:
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What’s your CAC?
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What’s the margin breakdown?
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Is the formulation clinically tested?
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What’s the competition landscape?
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How does your brand scale beyond your identity?
They focused on everything except the business.
The uncomfortable truth:
Some Sharks seemed threatened by the rise of the creator economy.
Why?
Because creators do in 1 video what traditional brands spend crores to achieve.
Because creators don’t need investors to grow.
Because creators have audience power, the old playbooks don’t know how to measure.
And that discomfort showed.
Final Take
Flying Beast didn’t go to Shark Tank to discuss his personal life.
He went there to discuss his company.
He deserved a panel that judged him on:
The business he built, not the content he creates.
If Shark Tank India wants to stay relevant, it needs to evolve.
Creators are not “side hustlers.”
They are the new-age entrepreneurs.
They deserve the same seriousness, the same respect, and the same quality of questions as any other founder walking into that room.