RAW DEAL
Businesswoman who turned down Dragons’ Den investment now runs £1.7m food firm
Rimi Thapar turned down £50,000 from the Dragons for her health food business
A HEALTH food business owner who turned down £50,000 from the Dragons now runs a company worth £1.7MILLION.
Mum-of-one Rimi Thapar, 34, said no to Dragons' Den's Deborah Meaden after she asked for a 30 per cent stake in her raw food firm LoveRaw.
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"There was no way we were giving that much away," Rimi explained to the .
"All that time I spent building the business, doing 20-hour days, I just couldn’t give a big chunk of it away.
";We did want the investment, of course, but we weren’t in such a desperate position."
Rimi's business specialises in organic, gluten and dairy-free snacks and appeared on the show in 2017, although the episode was aired in February this year.
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After the show, Rimi, who's from Altrincham outside Manchester, put together an investment deck which valued her LoveRaw business at £1.7million.
She then raised the rest of the funds through angel investors.
Rimi was a banker for Merrill Lynch for seven years, before packing it in to join her husband Manav who was running a textile business in Spain.
While she was out there, her father died following a serious illness.
Through her grief, she started on a health food journey where she gave up gluten and eventually tried veganism.
It inspired her to turn her own health eating habits into a range of food and snacks that she could sell to help others.
But she struggled to set up the business in Spain due to the red-tape and bureaucracy so took the painful decision to move back to England while Manav stayed abroad.
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It wasn't long before she outgrew the small kitchen offered to her by her in-laws in Altrincham and built a bigger one in their garage.
And not long after then, Rimi managed to land an order with Whole Food Earth in London.
Rimi said: "Ten days [after the pitch] he called and said he wanted 500. I thought ";amazing, he wants 500 bars", but he actually meant 500 cases."
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Since roping in her family to meet the order for 6,000 bars, LoveRaw is now stocked in 21 countries.
She said: "Appearing on the show was an amazing experience.
"It was very scary, it’s a very intimidating process. I walked in and saw these poker faces, the Dragons are looking right at you. All I was thinking was, don’t mess up, don’t scupper the pitch."
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