The Shark Tank Founder Building a Community-First Pet Brand

In 2023, Darshankaur Khalsa walked into the Shark Tank India Season 2 with a pitch for dog ice cream. All five sharks said no. Six months later, she merged Waggy Zone into Pets of Paradise, brought in co-founders, and launched new products. Then she started building a pet food company targeting India's 70% first-time pet parent market.

The sharks weren't wrong - dog ice cream alone was probably too small. But Darshan took their advice, refused to give up, and built something bigger than Waggy Zone ever could have been. What's fascinating about her story is that she was someone who was "damn scared of dogs" before falling in love with her first one. That transformation from converted pet lover to pet industry founder is what makes her resonate so deeply with the first-time pet parents she now serves.

Today, Darshan is the co-founder of Pets of Paradise, where she leads content, community, and marketing. She's also a certified pet wellness coach and energy healer. But more importantly, she's built one of the most authentic community-first approaches to D2C that we've seen - where the community was built for six months before a single product was even introduced.

This episode goes deep into what it actually takes to build a community-driven brand, what happens inside the Shark Tank that never makes it to TV, and why authentic human-driven content still beats AI-generated content, even in a tech-first world.

Key Takeaways: Building a Community Before a Product

The Shark Tank Reality:

• The episode is recorded about 6 months before it airs - Darshan's aired in February, recorded around September/October
• Getting funding isn't the only value - the three days of rigorous preparation force you to deeply understand your business finances
• You're in the tank for 30 minutes to one hour, but the episode shows just 9 minutes
• Being a unique category (dog ice cream) increases chances of getting aired even without a deal

Community-First Strategy:

• For the first six months of Pets of Paradise, only the community was built - no products were sold
• Co-founders supported this approach even when there were no immediate returns
• The 45-day cat parenting challenge on Instagram was a breakthrough - consistent daily content trained the algorithm to attract cat parents
• Real community growth happens when members themselves start helping other members, not when the brand pushes

Meta Ads for D2C Founders:

• Know your platform basics - at least 5-6 key metrics - before handing money to an agency
• An agency promising 4-5x ROAS without knowing your category is a red flag
• Put 7-8 creatives in each ad set, not just 1-2 - think of it like a football game where multiple touches lead to conversion
• Founders must explain their pain points to agencies because no one knows the customer problem better than the founder

Q: You were scared of dogs and now you're building a pet brand. How did that transformation happen?

Darshankaur Khalsa: I was really scared of dogs, and when you fall in love - like when you see a Shah Rukh Khan movie where there's music behind and love is happening everywhere - I believe I fell in love with my first dog. When you're actually a converted pet lover, you're so enthusiastic about this whole experience. You want to explore every possibility.

I resonate very well with the 70% of first-time pet parents because they are very excited about how to raise this creature that is so cute. That's how my journey also started. I would attend a lot of pet events because you're excited, you want to go meet other pet parents. My dog is 13 years old now - it's been that long.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: The most powerful founders aren't born experts. They're converted believers. Darshan's fear-to-love story IS her target audience's journey.

Q: You scaled Waggy Zone to 200+ stores before Shark Tank. What did that teach you about category creation?

Darshankaur Khalsa: It was very tough, to be honest. One, the consumer doesn't come back and tell me about the product. It's the buyer's perspective about the product which is totally different because the buyer is going to see whether their dog smelled it, did they like it or not. But the consumer - which is the dog - might not eat it even because they're not feeling well. I don't get a direct response from the customer.

The second thing was there was nobody else doing it at that point in time. While others feel like "wow, you created this," it's actually a challenge because competition is always healthy. At least you can see what someone else did and not make the same mistake. But here you have to learn by trial and error, which consumes a lot of your time, effort, and money.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Category creation sounds romantic until you realize you're the guinea pig. No competition means no shortcuts to learning.

Q: What really happens inside the Shark Tank? Is it scripted?

Darshankaur Khalsa: No, it's not scripted. The first 30 seconds they kind of prepare you - you write your own lines because you know about your business. They help a bit because a lot of us aren't very confident with Hindi or don't know the right words to use. Kind of like how in reels you need a hook and a statement - they help with those things.

But more than that, those three days of preparation are gold. You're only thinking about your business and business structure. Suddenly you're out of your pond, you don't see it the way you were doing it anymore. There are people questioning you. There are finance advisors running a trial round for you. They won't tell you what to say, they'll never tell you how much percentage to ask for. But the whole atmosphere forces you to think financially about your business.

The episode came on for hardly 9 minutes, but that whole thing in the tank, you're there for 30 minutes to almost one hour. The questions they ask, they're getting into every small thing - and that's actually good because I got to learn a lot about my mistakes.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Shark Tank's real value isn't the deal or the airtime. It's three days of being forced to audit your own business with nowhere to hide.

Q: After Shark Tank, you almost shut down Waggy Zone. What happened?

Darshankaur Khalsa: My ice cream was at 199 MRP and I thought my business wasn't able to expand. I was not in a very good space. I felt like it was time to shut down. There were too many complications - you can't grow it, you can't stretch anything, and it's a very seasonal product but you're still running overheads year-round.

I spoke to one of my distributors who is now my co-founder. I called him and said, "You know what, I'm thinking what if I bring the price from 199 to 99?" But honestly that wasn't a great idea - the sales stayed almost the same while revenue went down.

Then he said, "Come to Chennai, we'll have a cup of coffee and figure something out. I have something in mind." He had been in the distribution space for a long time and wanted to build a D2C brand. He asked me, "Why don't you take up the part you really like - content and community?" Even I didn't know I liked that. He reflected back to me, "Over the past eight years, you've built this, this, and this. People trust you, people know you."

I told him, "If you want me, Waggy Zone comes with me." And he was happy - he said, "Yeah, why not? I've seen you work hard on it." That's how Pets of Paradise happened.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Sometimes your biggest breakthrough isn't a product innovation. It's someone else seeing what you're good at before you see it yourself.

Q: How did you build the Pets of Paradise community before having any products?

Darshankaur Khalsa: I already had about 100 pet entrepreneurs in my group - I was running a group for women pet entrepreneurs because I'd won a Nari Shakti Award. When they gave me the award, they said you have to take a responsibility of the community. That introduced me to this whole concept of nurturing a community back in 2018-2019.

When we merged and started building, I just circulated it. I also do a lot of events and networking, so I would just tell them we're building a community. And because we didn't have a product, they trusted us a lot more. They were willing to share it to their society groups.

For the first six months, while the co-founders were building products at the back end, I was only building the community. I feel that support system was very important because with community, you don't see immediate returns. And it's very difficult to quietly let that thing build without shaking it up a lot.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: No product to sell = pure trust building. Counter-intuitively, having nothing to pitch made people trust Pets of Paradise more.

Q: What was the breakthrough moment for community growth?

Darshankaur Khalsa: The biggest growth came when I put up a 45-day cat parenting challenge on Instagram. It became really intense because now you imagine 45 days consistently giving capsule content. One, I'm not a cat parent - I'm a dog parent. So suddenly picking something outside my character, and my team at that point didn't have a single cat parent either - we were all dog parents.

Having to learn about cat behavior and put it into a capsule format where you're sharing it in 30 seconds to 1 minute on Instagram was crazy. But I feel that was a brilliant learning curve for the team and me. And constantly when you're hitting for 45 days, the algorithm started getting so trained that cat parents just started flooding in.

The interaction became really lovely. Those small things that you end up doing - just kept giving, no lead magnet, just a couple of lead magnets for first aid kit lists and what food is not allowed - that helped us bring a lot of people into the community.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: 45 days of consistent free content trains algorithms and humans alike. The platform starts working for you when you show you're not going away.

Q: You focus specifically on first-time pet parents. Why?

Darshankaur Khalsa: Somebody who's already been a second or third-time pet parent generally already has a community and has people to ask. The first-time parents are the ones who don't know whom to ask, what to do, where to go, and even what to ask sometimes.

Also, sometimes they just need emotional support. In my community, I see a cat parent going through their cat getting neutered - they'll still message and everyone will keep asking, "How is the bunny doing? Do you need something?" And they're like, "I'm a little stressed, I don't know what will happen with anesthesia."

These things as a pet parent, you don't know how much to ask the vet. The vet doesn't have the time to console you. So the community fills that gap. And we realized that first-time pet parents are way more conscious at this point because they are majorly the Gen Zs and millennials who are more conscious of what they're purchasing.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: First-time pet parents don't just need products. They need a support system. Sell the support, and the products sell themselves.

Q: What do D2C brands get wrong with Meta ads?

Darshankaur Khalsa: The biggest issue is founders not knowing the platform. When you suddenly have an agency and you're giving them 50,000-60,000 rupees plus money to run the ads - that's easily one lakh per month. Now when you don't know the platform, the anxiety is real. You're asking them every day for status updates.

Also, when the agency says your ROAS is 2-3x, they don't sit down and tell you what your breakeven ROAS needs to be based on your profit margins. As a founder, you know your margins, but because you don't know the technical side, you can't tell if they're doing things right or wrong.

If someone is promising you 4-5x ROAS without knowing your category, that itself is a red flag. A good agency will always tell you there'll be a one-month trial period where they're learning, and you should be mentally prepared that 30,000-50,000 might be for trial and error only.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Agencies know platforms. Founders know pain points. The magic happens when both stop assuming they don't need each other's knowledge.

Q: How many creatives should you put in an ad set?

Darshankaur Khalsa: Ideally when you create a campaign and an ad set, you should put about seven to eight creatives going into that same ad set. Then it becomes more like a football game - they see one ad, then a second ad, maybe they convert on the third one.

If the person sees just one or two creatives two to three times, they get irritated. The frequency increases, which means the platform can't capture their behavior. So there's some technicality which you should know - then it's easy to at least have a conversation with your agency.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Running two creatives is like playing football with two players. You need a full squad of 7-8 to wear down the opposition (and the algorithm).

Q: What's your one piece of advice for founders just starting out?

Darshankaur Khalsa: Please do some research, don't be overly passionate like I jumped into it. But also the other side is the more you jump into it, you do learn on the way. I think the one advice I'd give is don't be too rigid with your idea. That has been my learning.

Going from frozen ice cream to doing a powder, going to merging into a new company, doing food, being open to taking care of the community - the more you are open to learn and grow, there will keep happening transitions in your company. If you're not open to that, you're going to be redundant.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Rigidity kills startups faster than bad ideas. The founders who survive are the ones who keep their mission but change everything else.

Q: Will AI replace jobs in the pet industry and beyond?

Darshankaur Khalsa: I don't really personally feel that. I just feel how better can you integrate it and how better can you differentiate your work from others - that's where the whole game is going to come down to. People will find new things to do. There was a time last year when everybody was learning how to prompt. So I don't feel that's going to be the case.

But at the same time, you have to upgrade yourself. If you're increasing everything with AI, people will want to connect with humans as well. Personal touch and human touch will come into play. Those kinds of jobs will anyway increase.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: AI isn't replacing humans. It's raising the bar for what humans need to bring to the table. Upgrade or get left behind.

Final Thoughts: From Five "Nos" to Building Something Bigger

Darshan's resilience principle: "If you're not open to learning and growing, you're going to be redundant."

The bottom line: Darshankaur Khalsa's story isn't really about Shark Tank rejection. It's about what happens when someone takes a "no" and builds something the sharks couldn't have imagined. The journey from frozen dog ice cream to a community-first pet food company targeting 70% of India's pet market is a masterclass in pivoting without losing your soul.

The community-first approach is the real lesson here. For six months, Pets of Paradise built trust before selling a single product. They ran a 45-day challenge to attract cat parents when the whole team was made up of dog parents. They let community members organically recommend products instead of pushing sales. That's not a marketing strategy - that's a belief system.

For D2C founders watching, the takeaway is uncomfortable but true: you might need to spend six months giving before you can start taking. And the founder who was too scared to approach dogs is now teaching thousands of first-time pet parents how to raise theirs. If that's not proof that your biggest weakness can become your greatest strength, nothing is.

Q: How can people connect with you and learn more about Pets of Paradise?

Darshankaur Khalsa: You can find Pets of Paradise on Instagram - we do some lovely content and we also have a community for pet parents that you can join. It's a very active community where you can ask questions. Our products speak for themselves. You can also follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram - I'm always happy to connect.

Final words: Five sharks said no to dog ice cream, but they couldn't say no to Darshan's persistence. The real product she's building isn't ice cream or pet food - it's trust. A community of first-time pet parents who don't know what to feed their puppy, how to handle their cat's surgery, or where to find people who understand what they're going through. In a world where every brand claims to be "community-first," Pets of Paradise actually built the community first and let the products follow. That's not just a business strategy. That's a blueprint for any founder who's been told "no" and needs to find a bigger "yes."