The pitch i gave in the Dragons Den…
Due to requests from BBC Viewers who were disappointed that the BBC didn’t show any of my pitch in the Den – here is what I said:
>WALKED UP THE STAIRS AND PLACED THE LARGE SOFTBOARD BACKED 3G DATING AGENCY LOGO ON THE DISPLAY EASLE<
“Hi, My name is Romi Parmar and I am the CEO and founder of The 3G Dating Agency. I am here today to offer X% of my company and am looking for an investment of £X.
We’ve launched a safe multimedia mobile dating community that can be accessed from any network and on any handset that can access the internet. It is also available via a PC.
The service is completely free to join and this takes less than 2 mins. In fact as it is a live service it can be accessed right now by viewers on their mobile phones as they are watching this programme.
We’re completely unique in that:
> The service is designed from the ground up FOR MOBILE
> The service offers great value because it’s;
• Free to join
• Free to create a profile
• Free to browse
• Free to receive messages from other members.
• The only time you ever need to pay is when you want to send or reply to a message, and the cost is only 50p per message.
So this is NOT a premium rate or subscription service and because it’s prepaid the customer remains in complete control of their spending.
The Global dating industry is currently worth $2 billion. In 2007 over 30% of this was made up from Online Dating Service revenues – where average individual monthly spend is $25 per month. The size of this opportunity is all the more impressive when you consider that this entire industry has developed from nothing to this in less than 10 years. In that same period 6 billion people on our planet have gone Mobile. In the next 12 months it is predicted that more people will be accessing the internet via their mobile phones than via a PC.
Following on from a successful UK Trade and Investment mission to attend Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, we have been approached by leading brands from around the globe who want to bring the 3G Dating experience to their customers. In the UK we have signed a deal and are working with the leading high street mobile phone retailer Phones 4U. This Friday we launched a co-branded marketing campaign with them that provides The 3G Dating Agency “Guide to Mobile Dating” in the box of new phones being sold to a tightly targeted 20 to 34 year old segment of their customer base.
In the first year we are conservatively looking to attract approx 9334 paying customers to our service and this will generate approximately 817K of revenue in the first year.
Thank you for listening, do you have any questions?
<END OF PITCH>
Sorry to have taken out the amount we asked for and the percentage we were offering – we’ve done this because we think it may have been a little generous! If you’re interested, why not make an investment enquiry?
August 27, 2008 at 8:26 am
All makes a lot more sense to me now, thanks.
Why do you think they didn’t show you?
August 28, 2008 at 11:17 am
it’s obvious why they didn’t show you to me… it would have got you millions of new members
A very good business that makes a lot of sense to me, good luck with it
August 29, 2008 at 3:10 pm
do you regret going on the show?
September 1, 2008 at 4:41 pm
It’s at time like this you need to recall what the German philosphere Nietzsche said – What does not destroy me makes me stronger. Romi stay strong!
Good Luck
September 26, 2008 at 2:09 am
I was in the waiting room at the studios, just to let you know they did not let me on because they wanted more information. What a joke the dragons den is….
September 26, 2008 at 7:35 am
Thanks for all the comments.
@Raj/Veronese:
Thanks for your kind words
@Cool dude
Not at all… the recall of viewers to the sight of our 3G Dating Agency logo has led to lots of interesting new members for our community and the whole experience has provided us with a lot of credibility. Sadly everyone seems to have some experience of a rip off mobile service and it’s reassuring that we’re different because we’ve obviously met the high quality standards required to get onto a BBC business program like Dragons Den.
@Yasser Hussain
Thanks for getting in touch, sorry you didn’t get through. I was certain you would and had been watching out for you. It amazes me that the producers want all this information from the companies and then don’t go on to show any of it! In our case they had a folder full of documents proving this and that and then they cut our entire presentation and replaced it with me demoing the QR code that features in the logo.
All the same why don’t we do something together to promote your Mobile TaxiQuote service to our members, i’m sure that competitive taxi rates would be popular with our members…