In 2023, Pooja Balani of Jodhpur faced a family ultimatum: get engaged by year-end. She responded with ₹5,000, a YouTube tutorial, and a jar of cheesecake. Two years later, Miss Cheesecake operates two outlets, has sold 25,000 cheesecakes in four months, clocked ₹1.20 crore in 2025, and appeared on Shark Tank India Season 4.
Her family gave her a deadline. December 2023. An engagement. A husband. A conventional life mapped out before she had the chance to write her own.
Pooja Balani looked at that deadline and chose a different one. She opened YouTube, searched for cheesecake recipes, and started baking.
What followed is one of the most quietly powerful and joyfully defiant startup stories to come out of small-town India in recent years.
The Origin — A Trip to Jaipur, a Single Bite, and Everything Changed
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In 2023, Pooja Balani was nearing the age of 25. Her family started asking her to get married since she had recently quit her job. Little did she know that out of everything, cheesecakes would come to her rescue. "I began making cheesecakes just like that. I had no formal experience or interest in baking. I had the dessert in Jaipur, came home to learn how it was made via YouTube and baking books, and somehow became obsessed with it," Pooja shares.
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In November 2023, Pooja would make cheesecakes at home, package them into jars, and showcase them at weekend stalls held at a friend's local shop in Jodhpur. She earned ₹7,000 that month. In December 2023, she sold her cheesecakes at various exhibitions and even at a stall at a polo event. The Maharaja of Jaipur tasted the dessert. They shot some reels, posted them on Instagram, and they went viral. That month, revenue doubled to ₹15,000.
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From ₹7,000 to ₹15,000. A small number. A giant signal. The market in Jodhpur had never tasted a proper cheesecake before. And it loved what Pooja was making.
The Defining Moment — A Car Accident, Two Months in Bed, and the Decision to Keep Going
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In January 2024, Pooja and Narpat met with a car accident outside Jodhpur. While Narpat was mostly fine, Pooja fractured her hand and sustained a head injury. She was completely bedridden for two months and could not operate the business at all.
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She came back. And when she did, she came back with a co-founder. Around May 2024, Narpat Singh Rathore officially joined Miss Cheesecake as co-founder. He invested roughly ₹5 lakh to build the first physical outlet, a 100-square-foot rented space in Jodhpur.
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One hundred square feet. That is smaller than most living rooms. And from that space, Pooja and Narpat built a brand that within months was generating ₹8 to ₹8.5 lakh every single month.
The Strategic Genius — Reels, Radical Transparency, and a Reel That Got 60 Million Views
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The boldest move Miss Cheesecake made had nothing to do with the product. It was about the camera.
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Throughout the process of converting the space into the Miss Cheesecake outlet, Pooja and Narpat documented their journey, hustle, and learnings, and posted it as reels on Instagram. Clay.earth Despite the founders having a million followers on Instagram and their most-watched reel getting over 60 million views, it failed to impress the Sharks.
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The community they built online translated directly into customers who arrived at the outlet already invested in the brand's story. Flavours like Lotus Biscoff became instant hits, helping them sell over 25,000 cheesecakes in just four months. The brand's popularity even reached international markets, with customers carrying their cheesecakes to Dubai and the USA.
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Every cheesecake is eggless, vegetarian, and contains no gelatin. In a city like Jodhpur with a predominantly vegetarian consumer base, this was a product built with deep local understanding. Monthly revenues stand at ₹8 to ₹8.5 lakh with a healthy 50% gross margin and 35% net margin, Instagram remarkable unit economics for a two-year-old dessert brand operating from a 100-square-foot store.
The Shark Tank Moment — They Walked Away on Their Own Terms
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In January 2025, Miss Cheesecake appeared on Shark Tank India Season 4 Episode 6. Pooja and Narpat sought ₹30 lakh for 5% equity, valuing the business at ₹6 crore.
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Pooja took a memorable jab at Anupam Mittal during the pitch, saying: "Mujhe shaadi karni nahi thi, life mein kuch karna tha. I would be so angry every day at the man who made Shaadi.com, because my parents put my profile on the site." The room laughed. The nation watched.
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Ritesh Agarwal, impressed by Pooja's determination, offered ₹30 lakh for 7.5% equity. The founders countered with 5%, but Ritesh held firm. They walked away without finalising the deal. Wikipedia Post-shoot, Ritesh Agarwal verbally agreed to invest, but the due diligence and negotiation that followed was so time-consuming that Pooja and Narpat decided to call the whole thing off. "We realised that we should not give away our equity that easily," Pooja says.
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That decision, to protect their equity on their own terms, is one of the sharpest business moves in this entire story.
Scale, Numbers and Real-World Impact
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From May 2024 to December 2024, Miss Cheesecake recorded revenue of ₹48 lakh. From January 2025 to December 2025, the figure surged to ₹1.20 crore. The brand currently operates two physical outlets, one dessert store in Jodhpur and one cloud kitchen in Jaipur. Expansions into cities like Gurgaon and Delhi are already underway, using a hub-and-spoke model with central kitchens supplying kiosks across cities.
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From ₹5,000 in raw materials to ₹1.20 crore in annual revenue in under two years. Bootstrapped. Purpose-built. Entirely self-made.
The Business Lesson — The Best Response to Pressure Is to Build
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The sharpest lesson from Pooja Balani's journey is one that resonates far beyond the dessert industry: the conditions that seem most limiting are often the ones that produce the most focused, purposeful, and durable businesses.
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Pooja did not begin with a business plan. She began with a deadline and a determination to write a different ending to her story. That emotional clarity gave Miss Cheesecake an authenticity that no marketing campaign could manufacture and no competitor could replicate.
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"Our aim was simple: to create a space dedicated to one thing and do it exceptionally well," SignalHire Pooja explains. One product. One city. One hundred square feet. And the conviction that doing one thing brilliantly will always outperform doing many things adequately.
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The Sharks said it was too early. The ₹1.20 crore in 2025 revenue suggests the market had a different opinion entirely.
Sources: Startupedia, LinkedIn, Instagram
