Premium lifestyle stationery brand NOOE has landed one of the highest bids on Shark Tank India 4 so far. While the valuation looked lucrative, the brand’s founders said in a recent interaction that their experience on the show was far from pleasant.

NOOE secured an investment of ₹5 crore from Lenskart’s Peyush Bansal in lieu of 51% equity, valuing the company at ₹9.8 crore.

The founders of the brand, Piyush Suri and Neetica Pande, said that the “sharks” Vineeta Singh and Anupam Mittal tried to rush the deal simply because they wanted to go home. They explained that they were trying to negotiate a deal and Aman was out, so the two sharks stood up and said there was no deal.

“We were trying to negotiate a deal and Aman was out, so they both stood up and said there was no deal and the door started to open. Then I went back to Peyush and said we weren’t done negotiating with him. That’s when the door closed and they sat down again,” Neetica told The Indian Express.

He added that while he understands they were on for 14 hours, they tried to rush the deal and it felt like a wasted opportunity for the NOOE founders.

“If they were out of the deal, they just wanted to go home, so we had to stand up for that. If we hadn’t spoken up, we would have missed an opportunity.”

Its co-founder Piyush said he empathizes with the sharks as founders only have to pitch once, but investors have to sit for 2 months and listen to almost 12 hours of pitching.

Suri further said that the show’s investors have become very procedural and only ask questions to get the answers they want, but the amount of time founders have is not enough for anyone to decide whether a business is worth investing in. or not

Reacting to Vineeta Singh’s ‘business gaddhe mein hai’ comment, he said that he and Neetica wanted the brand to be seen and showcase their talent there.

“The gadde main hai business was a very funny claim. A brand like this takes a lot of money and effort to build, it can’t be profitable from day one. If they thought the business was so bad, no one would have given us so much .money was not charity, but an opportunity for them.