‘Dream-come-true turned into worst nightmare’: FlexiMe co-founder tells what ‘thanking Shark Tank India’ cost him

“On 13th March, we got blessed and thankful to Sony Live and News Production and Shark Tank India for airing us on Shark Tank India season 3,” Manjeet Singh said in a post. He first took the opportunity to explain how his company’s brand recognition and visibility boosted up after appearing on the show.

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“Our traffic grew by approx 80x and lead flow increased by over 40x. We got amazing visibility and branding and we were on the moon literally. We saw an amazing boost on social media especially Instagram and social media traffic boomed,” Singh said.

However, FlexiMe was in for a dramatic twist a month after….

Exactly a month after, on April 13, FlexiMe founders started witnessing their “worst nightmare”. Singh said, “Suddenly our worst nightmare started on 13th April 2024 exactly 30 days after airing when our Instagram suddenly got blocked without any warning.”

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“Our ads account got blocked, it crashed our business and significant effect on leads and business. Our revenues have been constantly falling, organic traffic dropping and missing all targets. Clients are getting worried as we have no social presence and it’s killer for an online business such as ours,” Singh explained.

What had happened exactly?

Singh informed via his LinkedIn post that Sony had “reported logo infringement and some other violations against” FlexiMe and seven other companies.

“All we did was uploading some reels and posts of our own episode and thanking Shark Tank India. We never had any ill intentions,” Singh said. “Suddenly all our Instagram and ad accounts have been blocked. We have running pillar to post to get it resolved,” he added.

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Singh further alleged that his company was never sent any warning email or given calls regarding the issue. “Else we would have immediately complied,” the co-founder said.

He said his team as written apology emails to Sony Pictures Entertainment, Shark Tank India, legal teams and also to Meta teams. “However, no one is responding or helping us. It has been over 5 days, all of us founders and teams haven’t been able to catch up sleep and trying all alternatives,” he added.

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“We are building FlexifyMe with a mission to help people live a life free from pain with best inetntions. Now we and team are losing complete hopes and requesting all LinkedIn family to help us in sharing with all relevant people so we can resolve it. We have built our accounts, business with years of hard work and sweat. Now everything is at stake,” he said.

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Published: 18 Apr 2024, 05:41 PM IST