After Ritesh Agarwal & Deepinder Goyal, Inshorts’ Azhar Iqubal Joins Shark Tank India

Inshorts cofounder and chief executive officer (CEO) Azhar Iqubal has become the latest shark to join the third season of Shark Tank India.

“The news is out! Introducing the newest Shark. Azhar Iqubal, cofounder and CEO, Inshorts to the Tank,” said the official handle of the TV show on X, formerly Twitter. 

The newest addition comes close on the heels of OYO cofounder and chief executive officer (CEO) Ritesh Agarwal and Zomato cofounder and CEO Deepinder Goyal joining the popular TV show. 

The Season 3 of the show will be broadcast on Sony Entertainment Television and will also feature Peyush Bansal of Lenskart, People Group’s Anupam Mittal, Namita Thapar of Emcure, Sugar Cosmetics’ Vineeta Singh, Aman Gupta of boAt, and CarDekho Group’s Amit Jain as Sharks.

Reacting to the announcement, Iqbal said he joined the show to help participants achieve their entrepreneurial dream. 

“On Shark Tank India Season 3, I want to tell the youth of India that where you come from and whether you have a degree or not does not matter; what matters is whether you have hunger, discipline and focus. And if you have it in you, I am here to support you in fulfilling your entrepreneurial dream,” Iqubal said. 

Recounting his journey, the Inshorts CEO said that he took a leap of faith and dropped out of IIT Delhi to start his venture when he was stepping into his 20s. He added that the last decade has been a ‘wild ride, full of excitement’ which helped him create a mark in the social media industry. 

“A decade later, as I step into my 30s, we are today one of the largest players in our space with 1.2 crore Indians using our apps everyday,” Iqbal added. 

The show features entrepreneurs from the length and breadth of the country. They pitch their ideas to raise investments for their respective startups. While the show has catapulted the sharks to celebrity CEO status, the fame has also been fraught with its challenges as Inc42 recently explored in a story. 

Iqbal is largely new to the angel investment space and has so far, as per Tracxn, only invested in one startup, Quickpay. By joining the show, the Inshorts CEO could be looking to scale up his bets in the Indian startup ecosystem and bring more eyeballs to his quick bit news platform. 

An IIT-Delhi dropout, he, along with Deepit Purkayastha and Anunay Arunav, founded Inshorts as a Facebook page and then scaled the startup to its current size. As per reports, the startup has so far raised more than $119 Mn across multiple funding rounds and is backed by names such as Tiger Global, Vy Capital, Rebright Partners, Times Internet, among others. 

Just like a majority of other sharks on the show, Inshorts continues to be a loss-making entity. The news aggregator firm posted a consolidated net loss of $31.8 Mn in the financial year 2021-22 (FY22), up 1.7X YoY. Operating revenue stood at $18.9 Mn in FY22 compared to $13 Mn in FY21.