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Shark Tank India 5: The Croffle Guys, Mumbai dessert brand making a high-stakes play

The Croffle Guys’ rise on Shark Tank India Season 5 feels like a modern startup fable, where buttery croffles, smart execution, and bold risk-taking come together to create a breakout moment.

January 02, 2026 / 14:23 IST
Shark Tank India 5: The Croffle Guys, Mumbai dessert brand making a high-stakes play
Snapshot AI
  • The Croffle Guys pitched their dessert brand on Shark Tank India Season 5
  • They asked for ₹1 crore for 1 percent equity, valuing the company at ₹100 crore
  • Croffle Guys topped delivery platform search charts organically.

The Croffle Guys’ journey to a breakthrough moment on Shark Tank India Season 5 reads like a modern startup fable with butter, crunch, and calculated risk baked in.

What happens when four friends from wildly different professional worlds decide to trade comfort zones for waffle irons? You get The Croffle Guys, a Mumbai-based dessert brand that has quietly turned a niche hybrid snack into a fast-growing urban obsession. Croffles, a crisp-on-the-outside, flaky-on-the-inside mash-up of croissants and waffles, may sound like a trend. But the way this team has built around it suggests something more durable.

The spark came during a boys’ trip to Thailand, where the founders spotted the croffle’s global appeal. Back home, Annanya Agarwal, Veer Pinto, Amay Thakkar, and Rahul Vohra went all in, each leaning into their strengths. Their backgrounds span business, operations, and creative storytelling, a mix that shows up clearly in both product and branding. Rahul, who has worked extensively in the film industry and collaborated with filmmaker Kabir Khan, credits his creative instincts and comfort with risk for shaping the brand’s personality and marketing voice.

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On Shark Tank India, however, personality alone does not move the needle. Numbers do. And this is where The Croffle Guys caught the Sharks’ attention. Even before aggressive expansion, delivery platform representatives reportedly flagged the brand for topping search charts organically, a rare signal in a crowded QSR landscape. Confident in their momentum, the founders walked in with a bold ask of Rs 1 crore for just 1 percent equity, effectively valuing the company at Rs 100 crore and setting up a high-stakes valuation debate.

As the Sharks weighed ambition against scalability, the core question hung in the air. Is this a short-lived dessert craze, or the foundation of a category-defining brand?

Reflecting on their journey, the founders shared that Croffle Guys was never meant to be just another quick-service restaurant. The vision was to build a feeling, from the first bite of a croffle to social content that makes someone smile after a long day. For them, Shark Tank India became a platform to showcase not just a product, but a story rooted in authenticity, humour, and community.

Vaishnavi Gavankar
first published: Jan 2, 2026 02:23 pm

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