Shark Tank pitcher hasn’t spent a rupee on 430 flights, 100 hotel nights, jewellery worth Rs 15 lakh; grabs 4-shark deal on ‘naya totka’

Shark Tank India: Save Sage's Ashish Lath used to work as Kunal Bahl's (L) Excutive Assistant. (Photo: SonyLIV)

Shark Tank India is currently airing its Season 5 on SonyLIV and the latest episode of the show saw an entrepreneur who promised to maximise and get the best out of credit card points. Ashish Lath from Gurugram presented his company Save Sage, which is an AI powered app based platform that finds the best credit card for one’s usage and tracks their reward points to suggest the best deals for them. Basically, it tells the users how to maximise the points they earn on their spends. Ashish shared there are 11 crore credit cards in India and an average user has 1.5 credit cards. He was pitching to Kunal Bahl, Anupam Mittal, Namita Thapar, Mohit Yadav and Aman Gupta. Ashish sought Rs 1 crore in exchange of 1 percent equity, valuing his company at Rs 100 crore. He revealed that he used to be Kunal’s Executive Assistant in the past. An impressed Anupam Mittal said one of the things Ashish said ‘aise hi’ struck him as the strongest point — the pitcher is actually over 23% from his expenses.

As Anupam heard the pitch, he immediately blurted out, “Naya totka (new gimmick)” giving the impression that this sounded like a new gimmick in the reward points game. Ashish then revealed that he has not paid for his and his wife’s flights in the last 10 years. In that time, they have taken 350 domestic flights and 80 international flights, along with 100 nights in various hotels. He also added that he has bought jewellery worth Rs 15 lakh without paying a penny. On top of this, he has earned 23 percent return value on all credit card spends in the last two years.

Just after his pitch, Aman invited him to compete as they both tried to find the best way to get the cheapest flight to Dubai. After much back and forth, Anupam declared, “Ashish – 100, Aman – 0” Ashish then showed his app and described all the features available. Aman appreciated it and said, “It’s solid” and Anupam said, “Selling point is strong.” Namita was also impressed by this and said, “This model is great.”

Talking about how he plans on making money from this business, Ashish shared that he has a subscriber based model and has three revenue streams. After starting his business in April 2024, he has raised two rounds of funding, amounting to Rs 6.8 crore. He has Rs 3.5 crore in the bank and burns around Rs 30 lakh per month.

Aman got out of the negotiations as he said that he can find the same information on Instagram reels but the rest of the ‘sharks had a different opinion as they gave him an offer jointly. They offered him Rs 4 crore in exchange for 12 percent, thus valuing him at Rs 33.33 crore. Ashish’s last valuation was at Rs 44.44 crore and he did not wish to go below that. The deal finally closed at Rs 4 crore in exchange for 9 percent split among Anupam, Kunal, Mohit and Namita.