Co-founder, Miss Cheesecake | Founded 2023 | Jodhpur
In January 2025, a young woman from Jodhpur stood in front of the investors on Shark Tank India and told them she had started a business partly to get out of an arranged marriage. Her company sold one thing: cheesecake, in small jars, from a shop of about 100 square feet.
One of the investors, Kunal Bahl, summed up his surprise. “Who would have thought that you could sell Rs 1 crore worth of cheesecakes in a year from a 100 sq ft shop in Jodhpur,” he said on the show, as reported by BollywoodShaadis.
This is the story of Pooja Balani and Miss Cheesecake.
A computer graduate in a year without jobs
Pooja grew up in Jodhpur. She studied computer applications, and Business Remedies reported that she is a graduate of MBM Engineering College in the city. According to StartupPedia, she finished her studies around 2020, just as the pandemic made jobs hard to find.
That year she began posting daily vlogs on YouTube. They did not take off. In 2023, she took a marketing job, worked there for five or six months, and quit in July.
She has spoken openly about the pressure that followed. She told SheThePeople that her family did not see her content work as anything substantial, and that her parents set a deadline of December 2023 for her to get married. They had shortlisted possible matches. On Shark Tank, she joked that she held a grudge against the founder of Shaadi.com, because her parents had put her profile on the site. “That’s when I decided enough was enough,” she told SheThePeople.
StartupPedia reported that the months between July and November 2023 were a low period for her, and that she lost confidence.
A first taste in Jaipur
The idea came almost by chance. In 2023, Pooja travelled to Jaipur with a friend, Narpat Singh Rathore, who was taking an exam there. She tried cheesecake for the first time and liked it, StartupPedia reported.
She had no baking experience. She taught herself from YouTube videos and baking books, starting with no-bake recipes. She put about ₹5,000 of her savings into ingredients and 225 ml glass jars. “Within a month, I mastered it and opened my shop,” she told SheThePeople.
Miss Cheesecake dates its start to November 2023. In those first weeks, Pooja sold her jars on weekends from a stall at a friend’s shop in Jodhpur and earned about ₹7,000 in the first month, according to StartupPedia. In December she sold at exhibitions and at a polo event. Narpat, who then worked for a polo horse company, helped on the business side.
She also had one asset most new bakers do not: an audience. She had about 5,000 followers from her years of making content, and she began posting reels about the business. Some of them did well, and December’s sales doubled to around ₹15,000.
“Our aim was simple: to create a space dedicated to one thing and do it exceptionally well,” she told SheThePeople.
An accident, and a mother who kept the kitchen going
In January 2024, Pooja and Narpat were in a car accident. StartupPedia reported that she fractured her hand, needed stitches for a head injury, and spent about two months in bed. Her mother and Narpat kept making and selling the cheesecakes while she recovered. Through those early months of 2024, the business sold about 40 jars a week.
A hundred square feet and a sell-out first day
By around May 2024, the two decided to open a proper shop. Narpat formally became co-founder and put in about ₹5 lakh, StartupPedia reported. They rented a space of roughly 100 square feet in Jodhpur.
Pooja’s family had doubts about the financial risk. But on opening day, her father closed his own shop to come and cut the ribbon, she told SheThePeople. By then, one of her Instagram reels had gone viral, eventually crossing 60 million views, and the brand had more than a lakh followers. They made 300 to 400 cheesecakes for the first day. They sold out in about three hours.
The business was registered as Miss Cheesecake Private Limited in August 2024, with Pooja and Narpat as directors, according to company records. Delivery through Zomato and Swiggy followed. Business Remedies reported that the brand sold more than 25,000 cheesecakes in its first four months, with Lotus Biscoff an early favourite, and that it makes its own cream cheese in-house.
Pooja still edits the brand’s videos herself. “Uploading videos is the hardest thing,” she admitted to SheThePeople.
The pitch on national television
It was Narpat who sent in the application to Shark Tank India. “It wasn’t pre-planned; we honestly didn’t think we’d make it,” Pooja told SheThePeople. They auditioned in Delhi, went through several rounds, and shot their episode in October 2024. It aired in the second week of Season 4, in January 2025.
They asked for ₹30 lakh for 5% of the company, which valued Miss Cheesecake at ₹6 crore. Pooja told the investors that monthly sales were above ₹8 lakh.
Kunal Bahl, Aman Gupta and Namita Thapar said it was too early to invest. Anupam Mittal said the cheesecakes were too sweet for his taste. Ritesh Agarwal of OYO made the only offer: ₹30 lakh for 7.5%. The founders asked him to come down to 5%. He would not, and they walked away without a deal, according to LocalSamosa and BollywoodShaadis.
StartupPedia later reported that Ritesh agreed to invest after the shoot, but that the founders ended the talks because due diligence and negotiations dragged on. “We realized that we shouldn’t give away our equity that easily,” Pooja told the outlet.
Where Miss Cheesecake stands now
Without outside investment, the business has kept growing. StartupPedia, in March 2026, reported revenue of ₹48 lakh from May to December 2024, and ₹1.2 crore for the calendar year 2025. Narpat told the outlet they were aiming for ₹3 crore in 2026. These figures come from the founders and have not been published in audited accounts.
Miss Cheesecake now runs its Jodhpur store and a cloud kitchen in Jaipur. Pooja still runs the kitchen herself, without a professional chef, and the cheesecakes are eggless and gelatin-free, sold in 225 ml jars priced at about ₹140 to ₹180. The company says it has served more than 2 lakh customers, and that about 70% of orders come from the shop counter.
“I still feel fear, but I’ve learned to move forward despite it,” she told SheThePeople.
The December deadline came and went. Pooja Balani is still in Jodhpur, still making cheesecake, now as co-founder and director of her own company.
Founder Journeys is a Sakhi Sangini series telling the stories of women who built businesses in India. This story is based on public interviews and reporting.
Sources: SheThePeople (January 2025); LocalSamosa (January 2025); BollywoodShaadis (January 2025); Business Remedies (April 2025); StartupPedia (March 2026); Miss Cheesecake company website; Ministry of Corporate Affairs records via NeuSource Startup.
